Frontier signal stream

Sierra Space announced it has secured contracts with undisclosed national security and commercial customers to fly payloads aboard Dream Chaser on the spaceplane's inaugural mission, which also carries civil payloads via NASA's Cargo Resupply Services programme. CEO Dan Jablonsky said the company is 'establishing a new operational model in which the same platform serves national security, civil, and commercial customers on a single mission'. Sierra Space describes Dream Chaser as the only commercial reusable, runway-capable spaceplane, and said it is still finalising the manifest with defence, civil and commercial payloads. The customers, contract values and launch date are not disclosed in the release.

NASA selected Blue Origin on 1 September 2026 to develop its Mars Telecommunications Network, a firm-fixed-price contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $700 million to deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter no later than 31 December 2028. Blue Origin will design, develop, integrate, launch and operate the network, which NASA expects to be operational at Mars by 2030.

Pacific Fusion broke ground on a $1 billion Research & Manufacturing Campus at Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which will house its Demonstration System — designed to reach net facility gain by 2030 and to produce high-yield fusion bursts exceeding 100 megajoules, making it the only high-yield fusion facility under construction in the United States. The same day, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration and Pacific Fusion announced a Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Collaboration on High Yield Fusion, High-Energy-Density Science and Related Technical Areas, signed by NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams and Pacific Fusion co-founder and CTO Keith LeChien. NNSA stressed the MOU is a framework only: specific projects and funding commitments require separate agreements. Federal, state and local leaders attended alongside investors including board member Eric Schmidt, and the company positioned the build explicitly against Chinese fusion investment.

Firefly was added to NASA's Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract vehicle, giving it eligibility to bid future task orders rather than a single funded award.

Impulse Space announced on 13 August 2026 a $28 million SBIR Phase III contract extension from the US Space Force Space Systems Command Space Safari Office, covering two additional missions - VICTUS SALO 2 and VICTUS SALO 3 - for which it will deliver two Mira spacecraft to host government payloads in low Earth orbit. It builds on Impulse's existing contract for VICTUS SALO 1 and VICTUS SURGO.

The Defense Innovation Unit contracted Firefly to design an Elytra-based deorbit system, pointing Elytra at the debris-removal and space-sustainability mission set.

SciTec won a $94m U.S. Space Force contract for ground-based radar digitization - the largest single disclosed award to Firefly's software subsidiary in the window.

SHINE said it was selected for the US Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, which the company describes as a more-than-$5-billion national initiative to double America's scientific output through AI. SHINE takes two roles: prime recipient on 'AI-Guided Fuel Cycle Facility Optimization', a Phase I project with Argonne National Laboratory as technical partner, and a contributing role on a second project. The lead project aims to produce an AI-enabled workflow letting engineers weigh performance, product quality and waste together when designing fuel recycling processes, building on two Argonne tools — AMUSE, which models separation chemistry, and ARTEMIS, which models full recycling facility layout — with a new AI layer co-developed with Argonne. No award value for either project was disclosed.

NASA selected Lunar Outpost's proposal to advance Starweave under the agency's Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity (ACO). Starweave is the company's distributed software layer enabling swarm organisation — multiple robotic systems operating as autonomous coordinated units — for future Moon and Mars operations.

Germany's Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space selected Biblis to become the home of the country's national laser fusion hub, with Focused Energy leading the effort. Biblis is a decommissioned nuclear power station site, and the selection is central to Focused Energy's plan to build Germany's first laser fusion power plant.