At the Farnborough Airshow on 21 July 2026, the FAA announced that it would move to certify electric air taxis, civil supersonic aircraft, expanded drone operations, and commercial space launches, and that it would avoid being “too prescriptive” and let industry drive innovation. Since 1973, 14 CFR § 91.817 has prohibited operating a civil aircraft […]
On 10 July 2026, China became only the second nation, after the United States, to recover an orbital-class booster under control, and the first anywhere to do so with a net rather than landing legs. The state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology intends to re-fly the same stage before year’s end. The engineering is
On 1 July 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) released the tentative agenda for the FCC’s Open Meeting scheduled for 22 July 2026. Among the items is Space Modernization for the 21st Century (SB Docket No. 25-306), a Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“FNPRM”) that would overhaul how the FCC licenses
From Part 25 to Part 100: The FCC’s Space Licensing Overhaul Reaches Its Decisive Stage Read More »
On the evening of June 12, 2026, Anthropic received a directive from the United States government at 5:21 p.m. Eastern Time. The instruction was unambiguous: suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for any foreign national, whether residing inside or outside the United States, including Anthropic’s own employees who are non-U.S. citizens. Within
Senator Ted Cruz, joined by Senator John Hickenlooper, has introduced the Nodes, Enterprise Workloads, and Hybrid Operations, Resilience, Integration, Zero-Trust, Orbital Networks Act (the “NEW HORIZON Act”). The Act would, for the first time, statutorily direct the Department of Defense (“DoD”) to operationally evaluate commercially available orbital data center services and space-based cloud computing capabilities.
On April 30, 2026, eighty plaintiffs filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas against Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (“SpaceX”). The case, Aguilar et al. v. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., No. 1:26-cv-00485, alleges that repeated Starship launch and landing operations at the Starbase facility in Cameron County have
The strikes conducted against the IRGC Aerospace Force Headquarters in Tehran in March 2026, followed days later by the bombing of a building at the Iran University of Science and Technology (“IUST”) on March 28, have introduced a crucial question for the global commercial space industry: at what point does a civilian aerospace facility lose
Civilian Space Facilities in an Era of Armed Conflict: Dual Use Military Targets Read More »
The commercial space industry operates at the precise intersection of private enterprise and state sovereignty. It is therefore uniquely vulnerable when those sovereignties come into direct conflict. The escalating geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran present a case study in how diplomatic friction translates, with considerable legal consequence, into
Geopolitical Tensions and Force Majeure in the Commercial Space Economy Read More »
It is not unbeknown to the public that NASA, for over a decade now, has been working to get humans back on the Moon. This has been a long and challenging journey that has successfully culminated in the Artemis II launch to the Moon this year. On the other side of the aisle, SpaceX and
Musk Announces SpaceX to Build Self-Growing City on the Moon Within 10 Years Read More »
European space security officials are increasingly concerned that two Russian “inspector” satellites have been used to collect communications associated with multiple European satellites, including traffic linked to government and military users. This has evidently been a sustained pattern over several years, with the alleged consequence being intelligence collection and a clearer mapping of how European
Russian Spy Satellites Intercepting European Satellite Communications Read More »
