News

The European Union is under pressure to step up its tech game and wean itself off a heavy reliance on United States digital infrastructure and services as transatlantic ties hit a new low.

Three European aerospace companies (Airbus, Leonardo and Thales Alenia Space) want to join up to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, setting up an early test of whether Europe is serious about creating global industrial giants or if national interests and the EU’s own competition rulebook will win out.

The U.S. military’s ambitious program to create a constellation of satellites for global communications and missile tracking is poised to begin launching hardware into orbit later this year, the Space Development Agency said March 7.

With a new Memorandum of Intent (MoI) signed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA), seamless mobile connectivity that extends everywhere from rural areas to bustling cities has just become closer to reality. The collaboration aims to overcome current coverage limitations by seamlessly combining space and terrestrial systems, helping to close the digital divide across Europe.

AST SpaceMobile’s newly announced plan to create a jointly owned European satellite operator for direct-to-smartphone services comes at a pivotal moment in the region’s push for greater space autonomy. The Texas-based low Earth orbit (LEO) operator’s partnership with European telecom giant Vodafone, which was already set to provide the cellular spectrum needed to launch its services in 10 countries, ultimately aims to extend coverage across the entire continent.

Japanese microgravity services startup ElevationSpace has become the first customer in Asia for Germany’s Isar Aerospace, which now only needs a launch license to debut its two-stage Spectrum rocket after clearing tests. ElevationSpace said March 3 it has booked a second-half 2026 launch with Isar Aerospace for AOBA, a 200-kilogram spacecraft designed to test a recoverable platform for space-based experiments and manufacturing.

In an online converstaion, Tess Hatch covers the evolving landscape of space investment and commercialization. Hatch, a former venture investor now in a banking role, discusses the shift in financing for space startups, moving from equity investments to debt financing. She highlights a significant trend where many space companies are now branding themselves as defense tech firms due to updated government contracting methods, making defense-focused business models more attractive to investors.

The company troubleshot several issues but ultimately decided to call off today's (March 3) attempt.

Spire Global established two-way optical communications for the first time between two six-unit cubesats. The cubesats, equipped with an optical communications payload about the size of a tissue box, transmitted data as far as 5,000 kilometers.

Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, is to carry out Monday its first commercial mission as European nations seek to secure independent access to space amid a shock rapprochement between Moscow and Washington. The high-profile mission comes as French President Emmanuel Macron calls for Europe to reduce its security reliance on the United States and the European space industry struggles to remain competitive in the face of Elon Musk's Space X.

The first metal 3D part ever created on orbit has landed on Earth. The sample was produced in ESA’s Metal 3D Printer on the International Space Station. Now, it’s on Earth for the first time, at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands (ESTEC).

The European Commission is figuring out how it could help Ukraine secure satellite communication capacity in the wake of Elon Musk reportedly threatening to pull Kyiv's access to his Starlink network.