Top Stories

Kratos Wins $446M Space Force Contract for Missile-Warning Ground Systems

Kratos Defense has been awarded a $446 million Space Force contract to provide ground management and integration for the Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking (RMWT) satellite program. RMWT is the successor architecture to SBIRS and Next-Gen OPIR, designed to distribute missile warning across a proliferated constellation rather than a handful of high-value GEO birds.

The ground segment is the linchpin of any distributed missile-warning architecture. Without it, data from dozens of sensors can’t be fused into actionable tracks. Watch this program — RMWT ground software will eventually feed into the same picture that theater commanders use for ballistic missile defense cueing.

Read the full story: SpaceNews

Rocket Lab Wins $190M Pentagon Deal for 20 Hypersonic Test Flights

The Pentagon has contracted Rocket Lab for $190 million to conduct 20 hypersonic flight test missions over four years. The deal funds the HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) vehicle, a modified Electron rocket configured to loft hypersonic glide vehicle test articles on suborbital trajectories.

Twenty missions over four years is a meaningful test cadence for a technology the US has been slow to field. Each flight generates aerothermal and guidance data that ground simulations can’t replicate.

Read the full story: SpaceNews

Innospace HANBIT-TLV Failure Traced to Hardware Fault on December Orbital Attempt

South Korean startup Innospace has completed its investigation into the December 22 explosion of its HANBIT-TLV rocket. The vehicle failed during its first orbital launch attempt, which lifted off from the Alcântara launch site in Brazil carrying five satellites. The root cause was a hardware failure — Innospace has not specified which component.

The five payloads were lost. None reached orbit. KeepTrack users can confirm there are no tracked objects associated with this mission in the catalog. Innospace had previously conducted a suborbital test in 2023, making this its first attempt to reach orbital velocity.

Read the full story: Space.com

US Military Accepting New F-35s Without Operational APG-85 Radars

The US military is moving toward accepting delivery of new F-35s without their APG-85 active electronically scanned array radars installed, according to sources cited by Breaking Defense. Rep. Rob Wittman, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, confirmed the issue and warned it will leave the military with aircraft that aren’t combat-ready.

The APG-85 is the centerpiece of the Block 4 upgrade that justifies the program’s current production contracts. Accepting jets without it means the aircraft are essentially in storage-ready, not fight-ready, configuration until the radar problems are resolved. No timeline for fixing the deficiency has been made public.

Read the full story: Breaking Defense

US Approves $16B in Emergency Radar and Air Defense Sales to Kuwait and UAE

The State Department has greenlighted over $16 billion in foreign military sales to two Gulf states. Kuwait is in line to receive $8 billion in radar systems. The UAE package totals $8.4 billion and covers various air defense equipment. Both sales are designated as emergency approvals.

The emergency designation bypasses the standard congressional notification timeline, accelerating delivery. For satellite tracking context, ground-based radar networks in the Gulf feed directly into regional missile defense architectures that overlap with space-based warning systems like RMWT.

Read the full story: Breaking Defense

Hegseth Floats $200B Request to Fund Iran Operations

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the Pentagon may request approximately $200 billion from Congress to fund ongoing and potential future operations against Iran. He acknowledged the figure “could move.” No formal supplemental budget request has been submitted.

A request at that scale would be the largest single defense supplemental in recent history, exceeding the peak annual cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. How much of it flows to space-based ISR and missile warning programs is not yet known.

Read the full story: Breaking Defense

Eileen Collins on the Making of a Space Shuttle Commander

SpaceNews’s Space Minds podcast released a new episode featuring retired NASA astronaut and Air Force Colonel Eileen Collins. Collins was the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a mission. The conversation covers her path through the Air Force test pilot pipeline and into NASA’s astronaut corps.

Read the full story: SpaceNews

Satellite of the Day

Sirius FM-5

Sirius FM-5 is a geostationary communications satellite operated by SiriusXM Radio (SIRX) for direct satellite radio broadcasting across North America. Launched on June 30, 2009, aboard a Proton-M/Briz-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, FM-5 represents one of the key assets in SiriusXM’s constellation that delivers subscription-based audio content to millions of listeners. Built by Lockheed Martin on the SSL-1300 bus, this robust 5,820 kg satellite features a single X/S-band transponder and dual deployable solar arrays designed to sustain operations for approximately 15 years.

What makes FM-5 particularly noteworthy is its role as a critical backup and capacity provider for one of the most commercially successful satellite radio networks in the world. Operating from geostationary orbit at the equator with nearly zero inclination, FM-5 maintains continuous coverage over a fixed geographic area—a ideal arrangement for consumer radio services that demand reliable, uninterrupted signal delivery. The satellite’s long operational life and strategic position in SiriusXM’s infrastructure make it a staple for space domain awareness monitors tracking commercial communications assets.

Track this satellite in real-time: Track Sirius FM-5

Upcoming Space Launches

March 20

• Rocket Lab Electron: Eight Days A Week (StriX Launch 8) from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand (18:10 UTC) Rocket Lab will launch the eighth Strix synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite for Japanese Earth-observation company Synspective. The StriX satellites are in the 100kg class with roughly a five-year operating life, part of a 27-mission dedicated Electron launch agreement. Watch Live Launch Preview

• SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5: Starlink Group 17-15 from Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA (21:48 UTC) Batch of Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to low Earth orbit. Watch Live Launch Preview

March 22

• Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS) Soyuz 2.1a: Progress MS-33 (94P) from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan (11:59 UTC) Progress resupply mission to the International Space Station. Watch Live Launch Preview

• SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5: Starlink Group 10-62 from Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA (14:43 UTC) Batch of Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to low Earth orbit. Watch Live Launch Preview

• China Rocket Co. Ltd. Smart Dragon 3: Unknown Payload from Haiyang Oriental Spaceport (15:39 UTC) Details to be determined. Smart Dragon-3 is a solid-fuel commercial orbital rocket developed by a subsidiary of the state-owned CASC group.

March 23

• Isar Aerospace Spectrum: Onward and Upward from Andøya Spaceport (20:00 UTC) Spectrum’s second test flight, carrying five CubeSats — CyBEEsat (TU Berlin), TriSat-S (University of Maribor), Platform 6 (EnduroSat), FramSat-1 (NTNU), and SpaceTeamSat1 (TU Wien Space Team) — plus a Dcubed “Let it Go” experiment. Exolaunch is managing payload integration and deployment. Previously delayed from January 21 due to a pressurization valve issue. Watch Live Launch Preview

March 24

• Rocket Lab Electron: Daughter Of The Stars (LEO-PNT Pathfinder A) from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand (07:00 UTC) Rocket Lab will launch two inaugural satellites — IOD-1 and IOD-2 — for the European Space Agency’s Celeste LEO-PNT program, a new European satellite navigation initiative. The full constellation is planned to comprise 11 satellites designed to complement Galileo, EGNOS, and other GNSS constellations to improve navigation resilience. Both pathfinder satellites will be deployed into a 510km circular orbit.

• SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5: Starlink Group 17-17 from Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA (23:03 UTC) Batch of Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to low Earth orbit. Watch Live

March 26

• SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5: Starlink Group 10-44 from Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA (11:22 UTC) Batch of 29 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. Watch Live

Schedule Changes

• New launch added: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-44 has been added to the manifest, scheduled for March 26, 2026 at 11:22 UTC from Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA.
• Launch confirmed successful: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 10-33 has been removed from the upcoming schedule following a successful launch.
• Status update: Rocket Lab Electron | Daughter Of The Stars (LEO-PNT Pathfinder A) has moved from To Be Determined to To Be Confirmed, with a window now set for March 24, 2026.

Note: Launch dates and times are subject to change due to technical or weather considerations.