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.

Iridium filed its definitive merger proxy (DEFM14A) and Rocket Lab filed the related 424B3 prospectus on 26 August 2026, finalising terms of the merger agreement signed 28 June 2026. Each Iridium share converts into $27.00 in cash plus Rocket Lab stock at an exchange ratio collared between 0.2400 shares (if Rocket Lab trades at or above $112.50) and 0.4000 shares (at or below $67.50); Rocket Lab has a committed $3.6 billion 364-day senior secured bridge facility. A virtual special meeting of Iridium stockholders is scheduled for 24 September 2026 at 8:30am ET, after which Iridium would become an indirect wholly owned Rocket Lab subsidiary.

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.

Reuters reported that Astra Space is seeking to raise $250m at a $1bn valuation, in a round expected to close in the same quarter, to fund Rocket 4 development and expand satellite propulsion work for defence missions. The company was taken private in 2024 and has not launched since the Rocket 3 series.

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.

Blue Origin identified the root cause of the May 28, 2026 New Glenn static-fire explosion at LC-36 as the main oxygen (LOX) valve on one of the first stage's seven BE-4 engines, confirmed via recovered hardware and inspections. The finding gives a concrete fix path but carries read-across risk for ULA's Vulcan, which also uses BE-4 engines.

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.