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The 2024 Annual Report from the European Defence Agency (EDA) gives us many reasons to be optimistic. It shows a continent waking up to the need for more cooperation, faster and better innovation and more intelligent investment in security. But for all the progress Europe is making — and that shouldn’t be dismissed — it still lags behind the United States and China in one absolutely critical area: harnessing the power of startups.

Poland has successfully launched a single-stage rocket demonstrator at the Central Air Force Training Ground in Ustka. The flight was part of a project to develop a three-stage solid-fuel rocket for research payloads.

Eutelsat shares closed up nearly 13% May 5 after the French operator said it would replace its CEO with Jean-François Fallacher, a telecoms veteran joining from a key partner in Europe’s planned sovereign broadband constellation.

German defense contractor Rheinmetall plans to start building synthetic aperture radar satellites next year with Finnish SAR constellation operator Iceye, amid Europe’s broader push to bolster military intelligence capabilities.

At the one-day conference, organized by Hypex Consulting under the title Space & Defense Summit, domestic and foreign industry participants shared their views on the development directions of the sector.

Over the past three years, the EU has been supporting the Union’s SST private sector by tendering more than 142 million EUR in 106 calls to 67 EU companies (incl. subcontractors). These tenders cover a vast range of hardware and software developments to improve day-to-day SST operations as well as research and innovation activities to prepare future space surveillance capabilities of the EU. More opportunities become available on a regular basis, so keep an eye on EU SST Procurement to find out more about ongoing and future EU SST tendering processes.

onald Trump’s return to the White House has prompted a shift away from ties with America by European political leaders and a rapid increase in defence spending as the continent’s security reaches a “turning point”. The ripples from Europe’s newfound desire for self-reliance could go even further: as far as space. Europe’s drive for more autonomy means it must also increase its invesment in space technology, according to Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency (Esa), the intergovernmental body tasked with overseeing the space exploration ambitions of European countries including much of the EU and the UK.

German startup Atmos Space Cargo says it considers the first flight of its reentry vehicle a success despite limited data on how it performed during reentry. Atmos Space Cargo flew its first Phoenix vehicle as one of the payloads on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission April 21. The vehicle separated from the upper stage about 90 minutes after liftoff and, roughly a half-hour later, began reentry for a splashdown in the South Atlantic Ocean about 2,000 kilometers off the coast of Brazil.

In recent years, defence companies have stepped up their involvement in space projects, prompting calls for more EU-level coordination and investment. Companies traditionally focused purely on defence are increasingly launching into the space sector. Although space and defence have always been connected, the focus until recently has primarily been on civilian use rather than military space capabilities — but that is now changing.

CEOs feels a mix of worry and excitement that the world’s biggest space entrepreneur has a hotline to the president. Musk’s influence, even before he became President Donald Trump’s trusted advisor, was already vast. SpaceX, the company he founded, accounted for 95 percent of all rocket launches from the United States last year, while its constellation of 7,000 Starlink satellites accounts for the vast majority of active satellites in space.

The space industry must speed up adoption of artificial intelligence or risk falling behind, government and industry experts warned March 27. During a symposium, representatives of both the space and AI fields argued for greater use of AI technologies for both spacecraft and applications of space-based data.

International space agencies stressed the importance of partnerships with the United States and each other at the Space Symposium April 9, as geopolitical shifts and an escalating trade war challenge the space industry.