Fong, who joined Congress in June 2024 after a special election, chatted with Payload about how commercial space can support US space ambitions, the administration’s NASA budget request, and the long history of space and aeronautics achievement in his district.
What’s the purpose of a SBIR award? That’s the question at the heart of a lawsuit York Space Systems has filed against the military, over a contract awarded to fellow satellite builder Apex Space.
A new professorship at the University of Colorado Boulder aims to bridge the gap between space engineering, business, and law, by emphasizing the importance of space governance to the whole industry.
The Denver, CO-based startup emerged from stealth today with $4M in pre-seed funding to help it develop a fully reusable satellite bus that can fly a mission, re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, and fly again.
Maxar unveiled a new product today to provide persistent monitoring of sites around the world, making it easier to spot anomalies or recognize patterns.
“I think in general allies are looking to invest more [in space] …particularly at this point at a national level,” she said. “There’s a lot of interest, primarily in commercial capabilities and accessing off-the-shelf capabilities.”
Leaders at six of America’s biggest remote sensing firms are urging Congress to reject cuts proposed in the Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget plan—a proposal that would dramatically reduce the government’s purchasing of commercial EO data.
It’s time for the aerospace and defense sector to learn to do more with less.
“There’s actually a lot of aerospace there [with] no space access at all. It’s a very underserved area,” Dawn Aerospace CEO Stefan Powell told Payload. “It’s kind of like the last link in the chain in making space access happen in the interior of the country.”
The legislative wheels are turning, with senators introducing two new space-focused bills last week and one NASA bill set to get marked up in the House tomorrow.
Officials said the lander failed to slow down enough for landing, likely crashing into the lunar surface, but the root problem is unclear.
“If we’re going to put something up in the sky for $500 billion and it just starts an arms race and then it doesn’t work because they can get around it, then that’s a massive waste of taxpayer dollars.”
