By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW — If there was any doubt that the center of gravity in the commercial space sector has shifted from venture capital speculation to kinetic necessity, that doubt was shattered by the final session, Smallsats at the Tactical Edge – Hybrid ISR and Defense Integration. SmallSat Symposium this year was no longer about democratization for the sake of access. It is about survival, deterrence, and the industrialization of the kill chain.

The session’s panelists—representing the bleeding edge of propulsion, sensing, and compute—made one thing clear: Any distinction between a commercial satellite and a military asset has effectively evaporated.

The Department of War Reality

The rhetorical shift was immediate and jarring. Throughout the session, speakers abandoned the polite euphemism of defense in favor of a blunter reality.

“The Department of War? Doesn’t just roll off the tongue,” Impulse Space President Eric Romo remarked, acknowledging the strange bedfellows of Silicon Valley innovation and lethal force. Yet Romo admitted that the Pentagon is where the industry’s traction lies. This is not a reluctant partnership, but a necessary fusion driven by the Space Development Agency and its spiral development cycles, which have forced a terrifying pace on an industry used to moving slow.

The mandate is integration prior to crisis. Gone are the days when commercial space acted merely as a break-glass emergency backup for bandwidth surges. Commercial sensors are now weaving inextricably into the operational fabric before the first shot is fired.

Decision Superiority, Not Just Data

The panel dismantled the legacy obsession with resolution and bandwidth. In a contested environment, a pretty picture is useless if it arrives twenty minutes late. The new currency is latency.

Mark Gombo of HawkEye 360, a former Marine electronic warfare officer, cut through the technical noise. “I submit that it’s more about decision superiority,” Gombo argued. “It is the decision space to understand what’s going on.”

This aligns perfectly with the tactical realities seen in Ukraine and Gaza, where commercial signals are jammed and logistics chains are hunted by AI-enabled sensors. The objective is no longer to hoard terabytes of data, but to deliver a target track to a weapon system.

Jonny Dyer, CEO of Muon Space, reinforced this urgency, noting that whether tracking wildfires for first responders or missile trucks for the SDA, the requirement is identical: “We really have to rethink how we architect a lot of these core systems to enable what I think is really ultimately a latency driven requirement.”

The Friction of Space Compute

Despite the unity on mission, the panel fractured over the how. A sharp disagreement emerged regarding the role of edge computing and specifically whether to process data on the satellite or on the ground.

Jeff Janicik, CEO of Innoflight, championed the need for trusted, high-assurance on-orbit computing. To close the latency gap, he stipulated, the decision loop must move to space. “We all know that we can, if we can take the decision making and all the data collection and data fusion that is currently happening on the ground, bring it into the space,” Janicik claimed. The barrier is not the processor, he emphasized, but the trust required to let an AI make a decision that could trigger a kinetic effect.

Dyer was less convinced. In a moment of refreshing candor that typified the session, he pushed back against the industry obsession with putting data centers in orbit.

“I might be the outlier on this panel, but I just don’t think space compute’s that interesting of an idea,” Dyer said. “Ultimately, we shouldn’t care where processing is being done.”

Dyer’s skepticism highlights a critical engineering tension. Launching high-power GPUs into orbit creates massive thermal management headaches, a point reinforced by research on Andy Kwas’s work at Northrop Grumman. If the communications link is fat enough, processing on the ground is cheaper and easier. The satellites, Dyer argued, should look like a data center rack, but the software must be agnostic.

The Debris Euphemism

The most telling exchange occurred when moderator Andy Kwas raised the topic of debris removal and the recent DIU solicitation for de-orbiting unprepared satellites. In the polite society of civil space, this is an environmental discussion. In the context of a hybrid space war, it is a discussion about clearing lanes and neutralizing threats.

Romo stripped away the pretense entirely, asking the room, “Does anybody actually believe that that’s about space debris?”

The laughter was nervous but knowing. Janicik concurred, noting that right now the Department of War would be more focused on fighting through it.

The implication is heavy. Technologies developed for active debris removal are dual-use. If you can grab a dead satellite to de-orbit it, then you can grab a live adversary satellite to disable it. The industry is building ASAT capabilities under the guise of environmental stewardship, and everyone in the room knows it.

Are We Actually Ahead?

For all the bravado about American innovation, the panel ended on a note of strategic anxiety. When asked if the United States maintains superiority over peer adversaries, the answers were mixed.

Gombo was confident: “Absolutely.”

Romo, conversely, pointed to the lack of situational awareness in higher orbits, specifically Geostationary Orbit where critical national assets reside.

“I’m not so sure that—for battlefield awareness in the battlefield of GEO and probably MEO as well—that we actually are ahead,” Romo warned. He cited Chinese RPO-capable spacecraft performing inspection loops around U.S. assets with little public response.

The Bottom Line

The SmallSat Symposium has evolved. The New Space optimism of the past decade has hardened into a cold, pragmatic focus on national security. The validated gaps are lethal, the customers are wearing uniforms, and the companies that survive will not be the ones with the best PowerPoint slides. They will be the ones that can plug directly into a classified network and help a commander win a fight.

As Gombo bluntly advised the room: “If you bring me a capability that’s not on my gap list, you’re just bringing me another rock. And I don’t need any more rocks.”

By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW. The era of cheap, plentiful, and diverse access to space was supposed to be here by now. Instead, the industry arrived at the 2026 SmallSat Symposium only to find itself trapped in a bottleneck of its own making.

During the Small Payloads, Large Upmass session, the polite veneer of industry camaraderie barely concealed the tension in the room. The narrative of a vibrant, multi-provider marketplace has collapsed. In its place sits a single, dominant provider, SpaceX, flanked by a long line of customers paying premium rates to stand in line. While panelists from Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, and European challengers like Isar Aerospace and PLD Space offered visions of a diverse future, the audience is living in a present defined by scarcity.

The Aggregator is the New Gatekeeper

The most telling dynamic onstage was not between the rocket builders but rather centered on the empty chair left by the neutral broker. With the dissolution of Spaceflight Inc.’s independent brokerage model, Exolaunch has emerged as the primary funnel for the industry’s volume.

Kier Fortier, Chief Revenue Officer at Exolaunch, did not shy away from the congestion defining the current market. The days of simply booking a slot and flying are over; operators must now plan for delays as a fundamental business condition.

Fortier stated, “I do think rebooking now is just the baseline expectation to salvage your launch budget.”

This admission signals a profound shift. Launch is no longer a commodity you buy, but a probability you manage. The consolidation of demand onto SpaceX Transporter missions has created waitlists. Fortier noted that despite the high flight rates, “There are folks eager to get up on orbit, and there is some scarcity there.”

The Paper Rocket Problem

This scarcity stems from the simple fact that the challengers are late. Rocket Lab’s Neutron was originally promised for 2024, yet it is now targeting mid-to-late 2026. Brian Rogers, Rocket Lab’s Vice President of Global Launch Services, framed this delay as a necessary hurdle of scaling.

Rogers argued, “Building your first rocket is ridiculously hard. Building your next 10 at rate is actually way harder.”

While Rogers is correct, the market is unforgiving. Every month Neutron remains on the ground is a month where mega-constellations sign long-term contracts with SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The session moderator, Curt Blake, former CEO of Spaceflight, pressed the panel on the risks of a monopoly trap.

Devon Papandrew, VP of Business Development at Stoke Space, addressed the monopoly question head-on. He dismissed the idea that SpaceX’s dominance is accidental or unfair, attributing it instead to technical superiority that others failed to match in time.

“Why is SpaceX a monopoly today?” Papandrew asked, then answered, “They created a step change in capability that unlocked higher cadence and lower cost.”

Stoke Space is betting $510 million that partial reusability is a dead end. Papandrew contended that the only way to break the current pricing floor, now rising toward $6,500/kg, is full reusability.

“If you look what SpaceX has done with Falcon, it’s amazing,” Papandrew said. “But if you ask them what constrains their flight rate, it’s production of the upper stage.”

The Sovereign Illusion

For the European representatives, the challenge is existential. Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, and Avio are fighting for a slice of the market that isn’t captive to U.S. dominance. Yet their value proposition relies heavily on the sovereignty premium—the idea that European institutions will pay more to fly European.

Francesco Sgarbossa, Sales Director for Avio, was refreshingly blunt about the limitations of European cadence compared to the American juggernaut.

“We are aiming at six, which sounds like a very low number when you think about it when you see SpaceX launching 160 times,” Sgarbossa admitted. “But even going from four to six is a 50% increase and that requires huge investments.”

This is the cold math of the 2026 launch market. A 50% increase for Avio is a rounding error for SpaceX. Daniele Dallari of PLD Space tried to reframe the conversation away from mass commoditization, questioning the industry’s obsession with replicating the SpaceX Transporter model.

Dallari asked, “Do we need another Transporter program? Does the market really need another Transporter program?”

The market’s answer, evidenced by the rising prices and full manifests on Falcon 9, appears to be yes. Operators want reliability and low cost. They are less concerned with the bespoke orbital insertions Dallari’s Miura 5 might offer if the price tag is double that of a rideshare slot.

The Ancient Game of Launch Chicken

The friction between satellite readiness and rocket availability remains the industry’s favorite scapegoat. Brian Rogers described the constant shuffling of manifests as a necessary evil.

“We’re no strangers to the ancient game of launch chicken,” Rogers said. “Spacecraft can be late. And that can be a problem when you’re trying to plan a manifest.”

But in 2026, the chicken has come home to roost. The delays are no longer just about spacecraft. The launch vehicles themselves are the bottleneck. The regulatory environment has tightened, and the FAA licensing backlog is real. The flexible slotting discussed by the panel is merely a band-aid for a lack of capacity.

“You got to launch”

The dream of a dozen thriving small launch providers competing on price has faded. The reality is a barbell market: a massive, efficient monopoly on one end, and a collection of hopeful, delayed challengers on the other.

Until Neutron flies, Stoke reaches orbit, and the European launchers prove they can hit a cadence higher than single digits, the SmallSat customer has no real leverage. They will pay the $6,500/kg, they will sign the multi-launch agreements, and they will thank Exolaunch for the privilege of a slot.

As the session concluded, the applause felt less like a celebration of innovation and more like relief that the status quo, however expensive, is at least a known and predictable factor. Curt Blake ended the panel by asking about the challenge to survive. Brian Rogers offered the only advice that matters in an industry choked by promises.

“You got to launch.”

By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW. The free drinks at SmallSat Symposium usually signal a celebration, but this year they feel more like a necessity. If 2024 was the year of the press release, early 2026 is the year of the hangover. Breathless promises of ubiquitous, high-speed connectivity from space have collided with a formidable wall of physics, finance, and federal regulation.

The mood inside the Computer History Museum is no longer defined by the novelty of connecting a smartphone to a satellite. That magic trick has been performed. Now, as the industry gathers for the session Cracking the D2D Code: Engineering Solutions to Power, Doppler & Spectrum Locks, the conversation shifts to a brutal realization. Making it work once is science, but making it pay is a nightmare.

Presiding over this reality check was Dr. Tim Farrar of TMF Associates, the industry’s designated contrarian. The panel’s title promised engineering solutions, but the subtext was an admission that the easy part (sending a text message) is done. The hard part (voice and broadband) is stuck in what engineers call a spectrum lock and what investors might soon call a money pit.

The Space Heater Problem

The central tension in the room is the battle between proprietary systems like Starlink, which attempt to muscle through terrestrial spectrum, and standards-based players like Iridium and Skylo who advocate for playing by the rules of physics.

Greg Pelton, CTO of Iridium, did not mince words about the inefficiency of trying to deliver service without dedicated global spectrum. He described the absurdity of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites flying over countries where they lack landing rights, effectively turning expensive hardware into orbiting junk for half their orbit.

“You’ve got this massive space heater running across the sky,” Pelton said. “Now I’m over this piece of land for 15 or 30 minutes, I can offer service. Then I’m shut off again.”

It was a stark illustration of the regulatory handcuffs that bind so-called supplemental coverage strategies. If you cannot clear the spectrum globally, you cannot scale the business globally.

The Meat Filter

Beyond the regulatory headaches, the panel exposed the raw physical limitations of trying to close a link budget with a device that was never designed for space. The unmodified phone is the holy grail of the direct-to-device (D2D) market. To an RF engineer, however, it is a disaster.

Pelton highlighted the Power Lock facing the sector. He noted that while LEO satellites provide better look angles than their geostationary ancestors, they cannot change the fact that consumer hardware is inept at shouting 500 kilometers upwards.

“The antennas on cell phones are terrible,” Pelton argued. “And the ones on watches are even worse.”

He described the interference caused by the human body itself (the user holding the phone) as “a big meat filter” that the signal is going through. This biological barrier, combined with the lack of gain on standard smartphone antennas, suggests that the dream of high-bandwidth data might require hardware upgrades that consumers aren’t ready to buy.

The Billion-Dollar Question

This physical pushback leads inevitably to financial friction. The industry has spent billions launching constellations on the premise of a trillion-dollar connectivity market, yet the panelists were hesitant to validate those spreadsheets.

When pressed on the actual market size, responses were sobering. The days of forecasting infinite growth are over.

“Is it a $1 billion market globally, is it a $100 billion market globally?” Pelton asked. “We don’t know that yet, and we’re not going to know for a few more years.”

Farrar, never one to let a valuation bubble float by unpopped, twisted the knife. He pointed out the fundamental disconnect between the utility of the service and the willingness of the customer to pay for it. Emergency SOS, though valuable, is rarely monetizable as a standalone subscription.

“I love the fact that if I fall over and break my leg when I’m out hiking, I know I can get some help,” Farrar said. “But I’m not paying anything for it either.”

The Intel Inside Moment

Despite the gloom regarding consumer broadband, a quiet revolution is occurring in the supply chain. The merger of Cobham Satcom and Gatehouse Satcom represents a shift toward industrialization of the sector, moving away from bespoke science project architectures toward standardized infrastructure.

Jesper Noer, representing the newly merged entity, emphasized that the engineering solutions to Doppler shifts and timing advances are now commercial products (NodeBs in the sky) rather than proprietary secrets. But even he conceded that the industry needs to stop fighting over proprietary stacks.

“A dream scenario for me would if people stopped doing their proprietary technologies on top and really join forces on the standardization efforts,” Noer said.

The Verdict

The session concluded not with a roadmap to 5G broadband from space but with a pivot toward the unsexy reliability of Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). Vijay Krishnan of Skylo pointed to the 13 million devices already on their network as proof that the dam has in some ways already burst for low-bandwidth messaging and asset tracking.

But for the blue ocean consumer who wants to watch Netflix in the middle of the Pacific? That ship hasn’t just sailed; it likely never existed.

As the panelists left the stage, Farrar offered a final, sarcastic reality check regarding the seamless roaming that billionaires like Elon Musk have promised. When Noer suggested that roaming partners were just a marketing term that needed to be solved technically, Farrar didn’t miss the beat.

“I’ll let you go and tell Elon Musk that tomorrow then,” Farrar deadpanned.

The laughter in the room was genuine, but it was the nervous laughter of an industry realizing that the laws of physics, unlike the FCC, cannot be lobbied.

By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW. Rockets still make a lot of noise, but the revolution visible at the SmallSat Symposium moves silently, digitally, and at the speed of code. For decades “metal benders”—those massive aerospace conglomerates that first weld titanium and then figure out the flight computer—have defined the space industry. That era is officially obsolete.

During a riveting Fireside Chat between Milbank partner Dara Panahy and Victoria Coleman of the Berkeley Space Center, the industry received a new engineering manifesto. The breakthrough isn’t a new propulsion system or a lighter alloy but a fundamental inversion of a design process that no longer builds hardware that happens to have software but instead deploys orbiting servers wrapped in solar panels.

The Software-First Paradigm

Coleman, an innovation veteran whose career spans the Air Force, DARPA, and Intel, pinpointed exactly why Silicon Valley is overtaking the traditional defense base. The secret sauce isn’t just capital; it is the mindset of the software engineer applied to the unforgiving physics of space.

“In the Valley here, what we’re going to build is a hub for new space tech,” Coleman declared. “Where we build the software first and put metal around it, versus the other way around, which is what’s being done by our colleagues in Southern California. I think there is magic in that.”

This is the transformation Panahy asked for, a radical shift allowing for iteration speeds previously thought impossible in aerospace. By prioritizing software-defined architectures, companies can update capabilities on orbit, patch vulnerabilities in real time, and integrate AI-driven decision-making at the edge. It creates the difference between a flip phone and an iPhone: one is a static tool, the other an evolving platform.

Solving the Speed Limit

This engineering philosophy is the only reason the Pentagon’s ambitious Golden Dome missile defense architecture has a fighting chance. Research briefings reveal a staggering $175 billion earmarked for missile defense over the next three years. Yet money alone can’t buy speed. The traditional acquisition cycle, often taking ten years to deliver a perfect satellite, is incompatible with the modern threat environment.

The solution is the unapologetically commercial approach pioneered by the Space Development Agency (SDA) and championed by Coleman. Instead of bespoke Ferraris, the industry is building reliable, software-driven Fords capable of deployment in swarms.

“The SDA was first and foremost unapologetically commercial,” Coleman noted.

This technical breakthrough—specifically, the ability to proliferate rapid commercial-grade hardware—is solving the industry’s biggest bottleneck: resilience. By leveraging the speed of commercial innovation, the US is finally building an architecture that can survive a punch. The Golden Dome isn’t just a shield. It is a distributed network of commercial innovation plugged directly into national defense.

The Reactor Core

To make this vision operational, the industry is building a physical engine. The Berkeley Space Center, a $2 billion collaboration between UC-Berkeley and NASA Ames, represents the engineering puzzle’s final piece: “the collision space.”

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens when you crash a doctoral student in AI into a startup founder and a Space Force procurement officer. Coleman described the center not just as a campus but as a translation layer designed to bridge the gap between cool tech and mission utility.

“We bring the students, we bring the faculty, we bring the startups, we bring the established companies,” Coleman explained.

This ecosystem approach is designed to bypass the infamous Valley of Death not by throwing money at the problem but by ensuring that technology is hardened, relevant, and integrated from day one. It creates a feedback loop where academic brilliance is immediately tested against commercial reality.

The Future is Bright (and Fast)

The mood in Mountain View is electric. The old guard’s monopoly on status quo operations has been shattered by a new generation that views a satellite as just another node in a network. Hardware is getting cheaper, software is getting smarter, and the innovation Coleman predicted is already visible on the show floor.

The industry is moving toward a future with “a little bit more coherence” and limitless potential, Panahy concluded. The sky is no longer the limit. The sky is just the next server room, to which Silicon Valley for the first time holds the keys to the door.

By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

From Sandbox to Shield: The SmallSat Industry Grows Up

MOUNTAIN VIEW. If the mood at past SmallSat Symposiums was defined by exuberant experimentation, this year feels different. The energy has not vanished, but it has matured. During the session Engineering the Future Spacecraft, a clear signal emerged from the noise: the industry is graduating. Focus has shifted from the novelty of New Space to the serious, high-stakes business of national infrastructure and defense.

The practice of launching science projects to see what sticks is fading. In its place rises a drive for reliability, scale, and sovereign capability. As Peter Krauss, CEO of Terran Orbital, noted, “The days of flying things that are TRL 0… are over.”

The Bar Has Been Raised

This transition is not about shutting out innovation but professionalizing it. The customers driving the market today, primarily major defense primes and government agencies, demand a rigor that early startups often overlooked.

Krauss illustrated this shift by describing the industry’s talent gap. “You’re interviewing a 25-year-old, you want them to have a master’s degree and 10 years of work experience,” he said. His humorous exaggeration underscored a serious point regarding the expectation for day-one competence. Jan Smolders of Space Inventor captured this evolution perfectly, arguing, “It’s not a tech market anymore. It’s a delivery market.”

Engineering hurdles are no longer about just making something work in a vacuum. They are about manufacturing a product repeatedly, reliably, on time. The Golden Dome missile defense initiative referenced in the research serves as prime example, demanding an industrial base capable of churning out assets at a pace that boutique manufacturing simply cannot match.

Sovereignty Over Hype

While the conference floor still buzzes with talk of orbital data centers and edge computing, the panelists brought the conversation back to geopolitical realities. When asked about near-term value drivers, Rusty Thomas, CEO of EnduroSat USA, steered the room away from speculation, stating, “What’s not going to unlock value in the next three years for any of us is data centers in space.”

Instead, Thomas highlighted the urgent need for resilient communications in an unstable world. “Sovereigns who want to have a resilient communication capability—countries in the Pacific who might get their cable undersea cables cut on a bad day—are still going to need to talk,” he explained. As global supply chains fracture, the ability to control one’s own communications infrastructure is becoming a critical asset.

The Integration Debate

As the industry scales to meet these defense and sovereign needs, a debate is forming around the best path forward. Tina Ghataore of Aerospacelab described a vertical approach born from the need to secure a fragile supply chain. “We’ve had to pay for the roadmap,” she noted, explaining her company’s move to bring component manufacturing in-house.

In contrast, Rusty Thomas advocated for a model where customers leverage existing buses rather than building from scratch. He argued against past inefficiencies, suggesting that “companies don’t need to spend $10-20 billion” to build a constellation when the infrastructure already exists.

A New Era of Seriousness

The mood in Mountain View is not pessimistic but pragmatic. The industry is moving away from the move-fast-and-break-things era and entering a phase of industrial resilience.

The Strategic Edge is no longer just about having the most advanced sensor. It requires a supply chain that can survive geopolitical friction and a production line that can deliver at volume. The romance of the early days has not disappeared, but it has been replaced by the satisfaction of building something that truly works and matters on a global scale.

By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Attendees at the SmallSat Symposium might have envisioned a future Space Data Layer as a seamless optical-mesh network capable of near-instant data transmission. During the symposium’s Edge of Orbit session, however, participants scrutinized the mechanics available to make that ideal materialize quickly. Attendees backed off from that theoretical end-state to debate the practical complexities and significant labor required to make this revolution operational.

Industry narratives have long painted low Earth orbit as an extension of the terrestrial internet—a high-speed, interoperable cloud above the clouds. Yet, when pressed on this unified network’s timeline, the panel’s optimism collided with engineering constraints. Carol Craig, CEO of Sidus Space, spoke plainly. While startups pitch immediate real-time capabilities to investors, she argued, “I think it’s still a good 10 years out when you talk about that full space data layer.” That assessment challenges a sector addicted to the concept of now. She attributed the delay to a fragmented landscape where commercial and defense priorities pull companies in different directions, creating what she termed “distractions.”

The Death of the CubeSat

The session also confirmed the demise of the form factor that gave this conference its name: the CubeSat. For a decade, shoebox-sized satellites costing less than a San Francisco condo defined the smallsat revolution. That era is over. The high-power optical terminals and onboard computer of the Space Data Layer simply cannot fit in a 3U box.

Beau Jarvis, Chief Revenue Officer at Kepler Communications, provided tangible evidence of this shift. Kepler, an early darling of the nanosatellite crowd, has radically upsized its architecture. Jarvis detailed their latest deployment: “This past January we launched ten 300-kilogram spacecraft that form the first tranche of our commercial constellation.”

This pivot represents a massive departure from the industry’s roots. As noted in research, Kepler’s shift requires a mass increase of over 2,000% from their original designs to accommodate the power-hungry realities of optical data relays. Building the internet in space cannot happen on disposable hardware, Jarvis posited. Larger satellites are necessary to form an always-on ring of connectivity—a feat impossible with the power budgets of the past.

Thermodynamics vs. The Pitch Deck

The most contentious subtext revolved around orbital data centers. Rob DeMillo, CEO of Sophia Space, pitched a vision where server racks migrate to orbit to escape terrestrial resource constraints. “We consider ourselves an orbital computer company,” DeMillo said, describing a modular tile system for processing data in the vacuum of space.

But this vision faces the elephant in the room: heat. While DeMillo argued that the move to orbit is as inevitable as the transition from dial-up to broadband, the thermal engineering community remains skeptical. On Earth, data centers use massive water loops and airflow to cool high-performance chips. In the vacuum of space, convection does not exist. Heat can only be rejected via radiation, a notoriously inefficient process.

Despite the polite tone of the panel, the gap between DeMillo’s vision of orbital data centers and the current reality of low-power edge processing was palpable. Planet’s David Marvin grounded the discussion in what is currently possible. He advocated using onboard NVIDIA chips, not to replace Amazon Web Services but to act as a filter. He described a scenario where a satellite tips off a wildfire commander with vector data layers rather than raw imagery. “Sending down a few megabyte package . . . is a huge advantage,” Marvin said. Smart filtering, not floating server farms, represents a realistic near-term future.

The Walled Garden Problem

Beyond the physics, the panel highlighted a looming market failure in the lack of a common language. Richard Hadsall of Integrasys, a veteran of the ground segment, warned that without a unified software layer, the industry is just launching expensive, deaf noise. “They’re not talking to one another,” Hadsall noted, estimating that it will take another three to five years just to get constellation-based spectrum data sorted.

The threat of proprietary walled gardens, networks that don’t play nice with others, also loomed large. With Starlink and Amazon Kuiper building closed loops, the rest of the industry is scrambling to survive by banding together under open standards like those set by the Space Development Agency.

Jarvis was explicit about this divide. “Starlink and Amazon are obviously massive companies able to scale quickly,” he said, “but they’re doing it in a proprietary fashion—which is a choice.” European and defense customers are recoiling from that monopoly risk, however, instead seeking interoperability and trust over raw scale.

The Bottom Line

The Edge of Orbit session clarified that the Space Data Layer is inevitable, but not imminent. The technology is transitioning from experimental validation to a messy, capital-intensive operational deployment.

The winners in this next phase won’t be the ones with the best PowerPoint slides about orbital clouds. Instead, success belongs to those who, like Kepler, accept the physical reality that moving data requires power and mass—ones like Planet who focus on delivering trust in the data rather than raw pixels. As the panelists stepped off the stage, the consensus was clear. The days of the cheap, simple CubeSat are behind us. The future is heavy, hot, and expensive.

By Abbey White, Staff Writer, SatNews

Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Coverage and analysis from across the conference, tracking the forces shaping the next phase of the SmallSat market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW. The age of PowerPoint architecture has passed. For five years, the Space Development Agency operated as the Pentagon’s rebellious startup, promising to deliver a Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture faster than the establishment could draft a requirements document. At the SmallSat Symposium, however, no celebratory mood pervaded the SDA Vision: Pacing Evolving Threats session. Instead, a sober atmosphere prevailed as SDA’s ambitions met the friction of reality.

Dr. GP Sandhoo, the agency’s Acting Director, took the stage at a precarious moment. He leads an organization recovering from a leadership decapitation following Derek Tournear’s departure and simultaneously facing a blistering Government Accountability Office report released just days ago. The report questioned the agency’s handle on technical risk. Consequently, Sandhoo arrived in Mountain View not to sell a vision, but to explain why the “Fight Tonight” mentality is harder to execute than it looks on a whiteboard.

The End of the Commodity Myth

The morning’s most striking admission was the demise of the easy satellite bus. The core thesis of the New Space revolution and the SDA’s acquisition strategy relied on the assumption that commercial satellite buses were commoditized goods, ready to be bought off the shelf like dependable pickup trucks. Sandhoo dismantled this belief with brutal transparency regarding the agency’s Tranche 0 demonstration.

“The biggest challenge we had with Tranche 0 was the buses—spacecraft buses—which were supposed to be a commodity . . . and none of them were,” Sandhoo admitted.

This represents a stark correction for an industry that prides itself on standardization. The Acting Director noted that while the exotic payloads (optical cross-links and Link-16 terminals) performed well, the basic infrastructure failed. He described the “onesie-twosies” failures that plagued the early deployment: “GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control] is not working, the thermal is not right.”

The implications for the supply chain are severe. Instead of theoretical speed, the SDA is enforcing rigor. Sandhoo noted that for the currently launching Tranche 1, the agency is behind schedule on checkouts precisely because they are forcing prime contractors to prove their buses work before they fly. “It’s one thing to launch a couple of satellites and kind of go through the whole checkout, it’s another thing to launch 21 at the same time,” Sandhoo said.

The Fire Control Pivot

While bus manufacturers face a reckoning, the SDA’s strategic scope has expanded dangerously close to the nuclear threshold. The conversation’s focus has shifted from warning (seeing a missile launch) to fire control (guiding an interceptor to kill it).

Sandhoo detailed the massive Tranche 3 awards made in December, which split the architecture into two distinct classes. The first is standard missile tracking. The second is the Golden Dome fully realized: a sensor specifically designed to close the fire control loop on hypersonic glide vehicles.

The Acting Director explained the distinction with engineer-like precision: “When you see MW/MT/MD, that takes a step further. That is, you can detect the missile, you can track the missile, but you can also come up with a fire control quality solution on board the spacecraft.”

That sequence presents the strategic edge in action, to which the Pentagon has committed roughly $3.5 billion, awarding contracts to Lockheed Martin and, in a major graduation moment, Rocket Lab for high-fidelity sensors. By trusting Rocket Lab with the defense mission rather than just the tracking mission, the SDA has officially elevated the company from a launch provider to a prime defense contractor capable of handling the DoD’s most sensitive data.

The Commercial Reserve Fleet

Sandhoo also addressed a subtle but critical shift: the enclave strategy. The SDA originally envisioned a self-contained intranet in the sky, but such an isolationist model has become defunct. Now the agency is actively looking to route military data through commercial constellations like Amazon’s Kuiper or the optical meshes of Kepler and Telesat, creating a hybrid space architecture that provides resilience through redundancy.

Using a domestic utility analogy to describe this pivot, Sandhoo stated, “When you have Verizon and Xfinity come to your doorstep, you should start using some of that stuff too to make sure you leverage all those things.”

This hybrid enclave architecture effectively deputizes the commercial sector. By publishing optical and networking standards, the SDA has created a market where commercial operators become reserve nodes for the Joint Force. If a Chinese ASAT weapon takes out a Lockheed satellite, the data could theoretically reroute through a commercial bird.

The Shadow of the GAO

Looming over the technical discussion was the shadow of the recent GAO report, which criticized the SDA for schedule optimism and for buying Tranche 3 satellites before Tranche 1 has proven its technology works. Although Sandhoo did not address the report by name, he noted the acting nature of his role and the budget’s palpable uncertainty.

Sandhoo acknowledged that the speed of acquisition is colliding with the reality of production throughput. “It’s one thing to have a technically ready thing; it is another thing to make 150 of those,” he said.

The Gamma variant of Tranche 2, critical for the advanced fire control mission, remains delayed following the Viasat protest and the subsequent leadership turmoil that ousted Dr. Tournear. Sandhoo nonetheless projected confidence in face of the undeniable friction, observing that due to competitive pricing, Tranche 3 proposals allowed SDA to buy 72 satellites instead of the planned 54.

The Verdict

The startup phase is over. The SDA is now a utility provider for the Combatant Commands. As Sandhoo put it, the goal is no longer simply to disrupt, but to pace the threat.

For attendees at the SmallSat Symposium, the message was clear. The government checkbook is still open, but the days of selling beta-test hardware are over. If you cannot build a bus that reliably handles thermal loads, or an optical terminal that instantly locks in a hostile environment, do not bid. The Golden Dome is being built, but the SDA is done laying bricks that crumble under pressure.

At the SmallSat Symposium in Silicon Valley on February 10, 2026, Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) unveiled the Hyperion mission, a pivotal demonstration intended to move its HYPER in-orbit relay constellation from concept to operational reality.

By transposing its world-leading terrestrial ground station capabilities directly into space, KSAT aims to eliminate the “latency gaps” inherent in traditional satellite communications, where operators must wait for a satellite to pass over a physical antenna to downlink data.

Bridging the Orbital Latency Gap

The Hyperion mission serves as a critical proof-of-concept for the HYPER network, which functions as an orbital relay layer augmenting KSAT’s existing global ground network of over 40 sites and 300 antennas. By deploying high-performance satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that act as “orbiting ground stations,” KSAT enables near-real-time data delivery for time-sensitive missions such as maritime surveillance, disaster response, and national security. This “always-on” connectivity ensures that critical satellite data can reach the ground exactly when and where it is needed, regardless of the satellite’s position relative to a physical ground station.

Seamless Integration with KSATlite

One of the key technical advantages of the HYPER architecture is its “plug-and-play” compatibility with existing satellite hardware. KSAT has designed the system so that any satellite currently compatible with KSATlite—the company’s automated, small-sat ground station service—will also be compatible with HYPER without the need for custom hardware or expensive optical terminals. This familiarity allows customers to explore low-latency relay services without altering their established mission workflows, making the transition from terrestrial to orbital data delivery intuitive and transparent.

Technical Specifications and Demonstration Goals

The Hyperion satellites will be high-performing 300 kg-class spacecraft designed to validate the end-to-end data flow from a customer satellite through the relay system and down to the ground. These satellites will support S-band for TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Command) and Ka-band for high-throughput payload data, ensuring they provide the power and agility necessary to demonstrate the HYPER concept at scale. The mission will specifically validate inter-satellite links and the ability to function seamlessly with KSAT’s global ground infrastructure, proving the resilience and speed required in today’s complex operational environment.

Milestones and Future Deployment

Celebrating ten years of the KSATlite service in 2026, Hyperion represents the next evolution in KSAT’s mission to modernize space operations. The company has officially signed a launch contract with SpaceX, targeting a launch window in late 2027 for the first Hyperion satellites. This mission will support multiple customer demonstrations and early testing campaigns, allowing satellite operators to explore how integrated orbital and ground-based connectivity can enhance mission resilience and data-driven decision-making before the full HYPER service scales globally.

On February 9, 2026, Momentus Inc. announced it has entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA to execute a groundbreaking in-orbit servicing and rendezvous demonstration mission. Scheduled for launch no earlier than March 2026 aboard a SpaceX Transporter mission, the flight will feature the Vigoride 7 Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV) performing complex maneuvers in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

This mission fulfills a $1.86 million contract with SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force, and represents a critical step toward operationalizing autonomous space infrastructure.

Multispectral Sensors for Enhanced Situational Awareness

The centerpiece of the March mission is the flight demonstration of Momentus’ internally developed Low-Cost Multispectral RPO Sensor (LCMRS) suite. This system integrates optical, infrared, and lidar sensors with advanced machine vision algorithms and data fusion techniques. Designed to enhance Space Situational Awareness (SSA), the sensor suite allows a spacecraft to autonomously approach, characterize, and navigate around “uncharacterized” objects in orbit. This capability is fundamental for the militarization of LEO, providing the Space Force with the tools needed for dynamic operations such as satellite inspection, refueling, and space debris management.

NASA Support and the R5-S10 CubeSat Imager

Under the new Space Act Agreement, NASA is providing critical mission support through the delivery of the R5 Spacecraft 10 (R5-S10) CubeSat. Funded by NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology (SST) program and managed by the Johnson Space Center, the R5-S10 will function as a “free-flying imager.” During the mission, it will detach from the Vigoride 7 to capture high-resolution imagery of the host vehicle, assessing its health and performance in real-time. This joint effort is designed to refine In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM) capabilities, moving the industry closer to a future where structures can be built and repaired entirely in orbit.

WiFi-Based Inter-Satellite Link Demonstrations

A secondary objective of the mission is the demonstration of advanced inter-satellite link (ISL) capabilities using WiFi-based data transmission. The R5-S10 CubeSat will attempt to transfer large files directly to the Vigoride 7 platform while in flight. These files will then be downlinked to the Momentus Operations Center and NASA Johnson, proving the viability of high-speed, real-time space communication. This “Space WiFi” approach is seen as a cost-effective way to enable complex formation flying and data sharing between swarms of small satellites, a key component of the Space Force’s proliferated LEO architecture.

Vigoride 7: A Fully Manifested Orbital Platform

The March 2026 launch marks a significant milestone for the Vigoride platform, which is currently fully booked with hosted payloads. In addition to the LCMRS and NASA R5-S10 missions, the Vigoride 7 will feature a 3D-printed fuel tank developed in collaboration with Velo3D, showcasing advanced metal additive manufacturing. The mission highlights the advantages of Momentus’ multi-manifest approach, where hosting multiple payloads on a single vehicle increases the data fidelity and operational results for all participants. This mission not only serves defense and research needs but also solidifies Momentus’ role as a primary provider of in-space transportation and infrastructure services.

On February 4, 2026, Muon Space announced a major transition from executing discrete satellite missions to the sustained deployment of multi-mission constellations.

This strategic shift follows a period of rapid growth for the Silicon Valley startup, which reported a 100 percent year-over-year revenue increase for the second consecutive year. To support this operational scale-up, Muon Space has expanded its production capacity by ten times, now capable of manufacturing up to 500 satellites per year at its 130,000-square-foot facility in San Jose.

Multi-Mission Strategy and Government Contracts

The company is moving away from one-off missions toward a “Mission Foundry” model, providing end-to-end satellite solutions that prioritize operational outcomes over hardware delivery. This approach has proven successful in securing high-value government agreements.

Muon secured a $44.6 million SBIR Phase III contract from U.S. Space Force to develop a dual-use space-based environmental monitoring (SBEM) capability. This project involves a three-satellite prototype demonstration focused on cloud characterization and theater weather imagery to support military planning in contested environments.

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO): The company was awarded Stage II of an National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) contract in 2025 to advance commercial electro-optical capabilities, providing multispectral data for national security assessment.

Missile Defense Agency (MDA): Muon was selected for the SHIELD IDIQ program, from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which has a massive $151 billion ceiling, contributing commercial space-based sensing to next-generation missile defense architectures.

Vertical Integration and Technological Milestones

Muon Space is aggressively pursuing vertical integration to reduce costs and accelerate deployment speeds. A key part of this strategy was the acquisition of propulsion startup Starlight Engines, which brings in-house zinc-based thruster technology designed for improved stability and lower costs compared to traditional xenon systems. Additionally, Muon recently closed a $146 million Series B financing round, led by Congruent Ventures and Activate Capital, to fuel its infrastructure expansion and staff growth.

Technologically, the company has launched its new XL spacecraft platform to accommodate larger payloads and higher-performance sensors. In an industry-first move, Muon also signed an agreement with SpaceX to integrate Starlink mini laser terminals onto its satellites. This integration, scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2026, will enable persistent optical connectivity in orbit, significantly enhancing real-time data delivery across its global constellations.

Upcoming Launch Manifest

Over the next 20 months, Muon Space has 20 satellites manifested for launch, including:

• SNC Vindlér 2.0: Deployment of the first three satellites for Sierra Nevada Corporation’s RF collection and analytics constellation in Q1 2026.
• Earth Fire Alliance: Three additional FireSats are scheduled for mid-2026 to enhance global wildfire detection and monitoring.
• Commercial Awards: New missions for 2026 will span hyperspectral mapping, radio frequency sensing, and thermal infrared sensing for a variety of logistics and agricultural customers.