Space · Lead record
An FAA Federal Register notice (FR Doc. 2026-05638) invites public comment on renewing OMB Control No. 2120-0720, the mandatory information collection tied to human space flight crew and space flight participant requirements.
Space & Defense
A pending application names individually identifiable corner-cube retroreflectors read by a laser-and-sensor body — directed, the disclosure says, at formation-flying spacecraft and in-orbit structures. It published this week, classified in optics and laser CPC subclasses rather than the spacecraft class.
Space
An arXiv paper (2606.17947) builds a continuous LEO collision-risk index and finds the collective burden of a constellation element can exceed its operator-centric risk by more than two orders of magnitude.
Space
A new FCC Report and Order (document 2026-06992) requires a broad class of license and authorization holders, satellite operators included, to attest to and disclose any foreign-adversary control.
Space
An FAA notice (document 2026-03291) announces a Final Tiered Environmental Assessment and FONSI/ROD for added Starship launch trajectories and Super Heavy landings at SpaceX's Boca Chica site, the regulatory step before expanded operations.
Space
A new FAA notice (document 2026-07789) implements per-payload-pound launch and reentry user fees mandated by the 2025 budget law, attaching a recurring cost to every licensed U.S. mission.
Space
Two weeks after replacing EPFD limits, the FCC Space Bureau opened a proceeding (document 2026-10617) on the geostationary reference links that anchor its new protection criteria, the parameters that will settle close coordination disputes.
Space
A new FCC Report and Order (FCC-26-09565) replaces the decades-old Equivalent Power Flux Density framework with performance-based GSO protection criteria, reshaping the regulatory floor under every U.S. satellite-broadband filing.
Space
Under a NEPA provision, NASA is adopting categorical exclusions originally created by ten other federal agencies. The move trims environmental review on routine actions, the quiet bureaucracy that governs how fast things get to the pad.
Space
A public notice invites commercial space firms and academics to advise US delegations to international meetings on spaceflight safety and responsible behavior. It is how soft-law norms for orbit actually get made.
Space
A proposed rule implementing the WRC-19 Final Acts would harmonize US allocations across spectrum from 495 kHz to 50.9 GHz, and quietly revisit field-strength limits at a radio-quiet zone that protects scientific receivers.
Space
The Space Bureau wants updated evidence before letting NGSO constellations use additional frequency bands to serve antennas on planes, ships and vehicles. The proceeding's docket numbers reveal how long this has been pending.
Space
A proposed rule in SB Docket 26-54 confronts an acute shortage of telemetry, tracking and command spectrum for spacecraft that are not communications satellites. The fix is a quiet rewrite of how the Commission classifies what flies.
Space
The Space Bureau wants to redraw the assumed geostationary network that every NGSO operator must protect. The numbers buried in SB Docket 25-157 will set how much broadband capacity LEO constellations can legally radiate.
Space & Defense
A June 2026 University of Michigan grant addresses a quiet problem with electric propulsion — the spin it imparts to a spacecraft — by building the counter-torque into the thruster itself.
Space & Defense
A June 2026 grant claims a method of vectoring thrust electrically rather than by gimballing the engine. If it holds, it points at thrust control with no moving nozzle.
Space & Defense
A June 2026 Viasat grant sets dynamic signal-quality criteria for satellite terminal installs — the unglamorous claim that decides whether a self-install actually works.
Space & Defense
A June 2026 Urugus grant spans space comms and cryptography — an anonymous, authenticated, private system for ordering imagery from a satellite. Privacy meets the payload.
Space & Defense
A June 2026 MDA Systems grant claims satellites built specifically for synthetic-aperture-radar surveillance and earth observation — radar that images through cloud and darkness.
Space & Defense
End-of-life disposal is becoming mandatory, and the patent record shows a small, scattered cluster of passive-deorbit ideas — a field still wide open rather than enclosed.
Space & Defense
Before direct-to-cell was a headline, Lynk Global filed on the core trick: making a satellite speak the language of an ordinary phone's terrestrial base-station protocol.
Space & Defense
Terminal guidance — the endgame where an interceptor closes on a maneuvering target — is the hard part of missile defense. An MBDA grant lays out one public version of it.
Space & Defense
Electric propulsion saves enormous launch mass but trades it for a months-long spiral to operational orbit. An Airbus grant claims a method for managing that transfer.
Space & Defense
Hypersonic flight is, first, a thermal problem. A Lockheed Martin grant on emissive composite materials is a window into how the public record handles a subject that mostly goes dark.
