The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast

Every satellite in orbit runs on sunlight. As constellations grow into the thousands, and companies talk seriously about putting data centers in orbit, demand for space-grade solar power is climbing fast. But the supply chain behind those solar arrays has a weak point most people never think about: the silicon wafer. It is estimated that 99 percent of the world’s crystal-growth equipment and wafer supply is Chinese-owned. And Beijing recently proposed export controls aimed squarely at thin-wafer technology for aerospace and defense.

“The challenge was that Chinese overcapacity collapsed the terrestrial wafer market and therefore wafer pric...

NASA said Friday that the designs and flight plans for two commercial crewed Moon landers have changed. The goal is a 2028 landing.

“Regardless of who goes first, both providers are planning for lunar landing missions in 2028.” Jeremy Parsons, NASA

The changes affect landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX. NASA gave details in a news release and at a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Artemis III will stay in low Earth orbit next year. Four astronauts will practice docking Orion with test versions of both landers. NASA officials said Arte...

By all accounts Earth orbit will be a major driver of the world’s economy in the coming decades. Companies are developing processes for manufacturing and medical research in microgravity, as well as infrastructure for communications, satellite life extension and national defense. It is a very exciting time to be in the business of space.

“We see this platform as something which is very complementary with a future commercial infrastructure. And obviously, as investors invest and scale these opportunities, this is very valuable channel for them as well.”Sven Eenmaa, ISS National Labs

The IS...

A SpaceX Starship reached orbit on Test Flight 14, marking a significant milestone towards NASAs goal of building an ongoing human presence on the moon.

Starship lifted off as its launch window opened at 7:48 am local time at Starbase Texas. The super heavy booster performed mostly nominally, though one of the 33 Raptor engines did shut down prematurely. Still, the mission continued with a clean stage separation and booster return to Earth, splashing down in the Gulf of America about 8 minutes after launch. The booster simulated the manuver that will be needed for a capture back at Starbase, but...

NASA still wants a second ride to the International Space Station. The obvious choice is Boeing’s Starliner, on which the taxpayers have already spent a lot of money. But the issues with the spacecraft are well documented.

On Monday, shortly after SpaceX’s Starship was reached orbit for the first time, NASA and Boeing officials held a news conference at the Kennedy Space Center to outline where the Starliner program stands, what is being done to correct the issues, and introduce the commander of the next crewed mission.

A NASA OIG audit released Wednesday found the GRACE-C gravity mission on track to launch within its $658 million baseline. But the project has already used most of its cost reserves.

GRACE-C stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Continuity. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, manages the mission in partnership with the German Aerospace Center, known as DLR. The mission’s twin satellites will track changes in Earth’s gravity field to measure ice sheets, groundwater and sea levels.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General found the project had spent 61.2 percent of its project-managed cost reserves...

The British government has unveiled a new national space strategy. It consolidates $10.6 billion in defense, security and industrial growth spending through 2030, and that’s the first time all of that spending has been folded into a single framework.

The plan, which replaces the UKs 2021 space strategy, comes from the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. The new document names four priority areas: satellite communications, in-orbit servicing and manufacturing, space domain awareness, and assured access to space.

Connectivity programs get the largest share of the money, at $3.8 billion. That includes the Connectivity in Low Earth Or...

Eight early-stage companies have been selected for the second year of a national accelerator program that pairs access to the International Space Station with private investment capital.

The International Space Station National Laboratory named the group as the 2026 cohort of its Orbital Edge Accelerator. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, runs the program under agreement with NASA. Selected companies will receive $500,000 to $750,000 in private capital along with access to low Earth orbit for research and development.

The cohort splits into two tracks. The Sentinel Track includes four companies working on...

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr says Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz will leave his post later this month, with Deputy Bureau Chief Jennifer Gilsenan taking over as acting chief during the transition.

Schwarz led the bureau, which handles licensing and policy for satellite and space-based communications, through a period of expanded processing targets and a rewrite of the agency’s space rules. On July 22, the commission voted to adopt a Report and Order replacing the decades-old Part 25 licensing framework with a new Part 100.

Carr credited Schwarz and Space Bureau staff with cutting the agency’s li...

The global space economy grew 12% last year, reaching $686 billion, according to a new report from Space Foundation.

That’s the second double-digit gain of the decade, though it trails 2021’s 15.5% post-pandemic surge. It’s the fourth-highest growth rate Space Foundation has recorded since it began tracking the industry in 2006. The five-year compound annual growth rate now stands at 9.8%, up more than two percentage points from the prior five-year stretch.

Commercial activity drove most of the increase, accounting for $544.3 billion — 79% of the total — up from $481.5 billion in 2024. U.S. government spending came in at $78.3 billion, or 57% of all gov...

The Office of Space Commerce says it will publish a Federal Register notice within weeks seeking the first applications for its proposed space licensing certification.

The notice would invite companies to apply under the “Space Commerce Certification,” a voluntary process OSC proposed in March to consolidate licensing for commercial space activities not clearly covered under existing FAA, FCC or OSC remote-sensing rules. The office says it plans to begin certifying missions within months of the notice’s publication.

OSC posted a video with the announcement. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick framed the certification as central to the de...

SpaceX priced its initial public offering on June 11th and closed its Nasdaq debut at $161 a share, up 19% on day one and up another 20% the session after, making it the largest IPO in stock market history by several measures. After hitting a high of about $226 on June 26th, the stock has since settled to an average price of $175 per share, give or take a few dollars. [Paywall]

The company trades under the ticker SPCX. Its registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists the offering mechanics in detail, but it does not break out revenue or...

The United States is launching more rockets than ever before — but is it enough? With U.S. orbital launch demand already surpassing 180 launches per year and a pipeline of satellite constellations, government missions, and proposed space-based data centers that could push that number into the thousands, America’s launch infrastructure is facing a stress test it was never designed to handle. In this episode, Tom Patton talks with Dr. Tom Colvin, Managing Partner and Chief Technologist at Rational Futures, to unpack the findings of the firm’s May 2026 report “SCRUBBED: America’s Launch Capacity Challenge”, which was commissioned by the Commerci...

In the span of roughly twelve months, NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations program — CLD — has been restructured, redirected, walked back, and redirected again. That’s not normal. It’s worth talking about why.

The CLD program was created in March 2021 under the Biden administration. The idea was straightforward: NASA would invest in privately built space stations, then become one of several paying customers — not the owner, not the operator. The agency would buy a seat at the table, not build the table.

That model held for four years.

Then, in July 2025, President Trump named Transp...

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman faced tough questions from both chambers of Congress last week over the Trump administration’s proposed twenty-three percent cut to the agency’s budget. But behind the bottom-line numbers lies a more specific debate — one with real stakes for the commercial space industry and the supply chains that keep American rockets flying.

The Artemis II mission may have captured the world’s attention last month — sending four astronauts farther from Earth than any humans in history. But on Capitol Hill, the glow didn’t last long. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle arrived at t...

One of the long-standing advocacy groups for space is Space Foundation, which was established in 1983 with a mission to advance the global space community through education, collaboration, and information.

“We know that there are going to be some obstacles, but we know together we can get there. Artemis II proved that when you have all of the various pieces that came together and it all worked perfectly.”Rich Cooper, Space Foundation

Space Foundation is perhaps best known for its Research & Analysis, Space Certification program, the Space Technology Hall of Fame, and its signature annu...

Interested in what happened at Space Symposium? Here’s a quick recap of some of the main topics at the show in Colorado Springs from Rich Cooper, VP of Strategic Communicaitons and Outreach at Space Foundation.

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a white paper last month focused on the supply chain for the commercial space industry, and the findings may have been something of a wake-up call for the industry.

According to the report, “Strengthening America’s Space Supply Chain: Built for yesterday, igniting momentum for tomorrow”, the U.S. space industrial base has not kept pace with industry growth, and that poses risks to national security, as well as civil, and commercial space programs.

On this edition of The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast, Tom Patton talks...

The Federal Communications Commission is on the verge of a major overhaul in how satellites share spectrum — and the economic stakes are enormous.

F-C-C Chairman Brendan Carr announced the Commission will vote on a new order to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules. If adopted, the changes could unlock more than two billion dollars in economic benefits and enable up to seven times more capacity for space-based broadband services.

At the heart of the order is a proposal to replace the decades-old Equivalent Power Flux Density framework — known as EPFD — with modern, performance-based rules that account for to...

At its March meeting, the FCC unanimously approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking comments on a proposal to make additional spectrum available for command and control of spacecraft supporting emergent space operations, but which do not use spectrum as part of any radiocommunications services provided to the public. The NPRM was dubbed “Weird Space Stuff” by the commission.

On this edition of The Journal of Space Commerce podcast, Tom Patton talks with FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz about the proposal, as well as some of the history and the broader range of functions carried out...

Space has become a critical warfighting domain, requiring an approach to training that prepares warfighters to use new technology. AI is redefining space warfare training, and is becoming vital for deterrence and national security.

Slingshot Aerospace is a U.S.-based space data and analytics company focused on making space operations more safe, sustainable, and secure through satellite tracking, space traffic coordination, and high‑fidelity modeling and simulation tools.

What does this signal for the future of AI-enabled military training? On this edition of The Journal of Space Commerce, Tom Patton talks with Dr. Belinda Ma...

SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval to launch up to one million satellites for what the company is calling an orbital data center system.

To put that number in perspective, that’s roughly a thousand times larger than SpaceX’s current Starlink internet constellation. The FCC’s Space Bureau accepted the application last week, setting the wheels in motion for what could become an unprecedented expansion of commercial space operations.

According to the filing, these satellites would operate at altitudes between 310 and 1,243 miles above Earth, organized in orbital shells spanni...

The U.S. Space Force Space Development Agency (SDA) has awarded a $52.5 million contract to Starfish Space to provide Deorbit-as-a-Service (DaaS) for satellites within the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The award is the first such contracted mission for end-of-life satellite disposal service for any provider.

Under the contract, Starfish Space will build, launch, and operate an Otter spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) to safely and efficiently dispose of SDA satellites at the end of their operational lives. The mission begins with an initial deorbit, with options for multiple additional deorbits, enabled by Otter’s significant ca...

AE Industrial Partners is a private investment firm focused on technologies and services considered critical to aerospace and national and economic security. Founded in 1998 by father-son team Brian and David Rowe, AEI manages $7.2 billion in assets from their headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.

“(W)ithout space as a backbone of that infrastructure our modern day economy sort of collapses at this point.” Kirk Konert, AE Industrial Partners

On this edition of The Journal of Space Commerce podcast, Tom Patton talks with Kirk Konert, A Managing Partner with the firm.

AE Industrial Part...

Space Ocean Corp is an emerging pre-revenue space logistics startup headquartered in Brownsville, Texas. Founded in 2021, the company is developing what amounts to the “gas station in space” infrastructure—providing critical on-orbit refueling and resource transfer services that enable satellites to operate longer, travel farther, and reduce launch costs.

“And if you could get refueled out there in those far away locations, which are several years away, or maybe in the future, only several months away, well, that’ll extend that billion dollar satellite and enable more capability.” Paul Mamakos, Space Ocean

The company has...

No one knows precisely how many objects there are in Earth orbit. Estimates range from NASA’s 31,000 to just over 40,000, according to ESA. But at some point, it just becomes a large number. The bottom line is there are a lot of satellites, defunct spacecraft, parts of spacecraft and outright junk orbiting the Earth, and any one of them could cause a catastrophe.

One company that is working to catalog and track both functioning satellites and orbital debris is Kayhan Space. Their SatCat program allows both governments, businesses and the general public to see and follow what is...

The commercial space industry attracted $5.8 billion across 115 companies in the third quarter of 2025, putting the year on track to rank among the top three funding years on record, according to Space Capital’s latest quarterly report.

The report noted that NASA faces budget constraints, with the administration proposing cuts while Congress works to maintain funding near $25 billion. That is pushing defense spending to emerge as the primary investment driver, with the Space Force potentially receiving $40 billion in fiscal year 2026, representing 40% year-over-year growth.

In a video released by Space Capital, founder and CEO Chad Anderson said co...

Federal regulators accepted applications that would enable satellites to provide cellular coverage directly to existing smartphones in partnership with major wireless carriers. The FCC announced last week that AST SpaceMobile and AT&T, Verizon, and FirstNet have filed joint applications for supplemental coverage from space authorization. The Space Bureau, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau found the applications acceptable for filing after initial review.

AST SpaceMobile seeks authority to operate 248 non-geostationary orbit satellites that would work with terrestrial networks from AT&T, Verizon, and FirstNet, and would use existing cellular frequency bands for...

LUMA … The Lunar Museum of Art … is a digital museum and archival initiative focused on the intersection of art, space, and technology. It presents curated exhibitions, immersive galleries, and projects that explore humanity’s cultural expansion beyond Earth. LUMA is also a leader in integrating NFTs and digital storytelling into space-themed experiences.

"From a practical point of view, we're the first museum on the moon.”Michael Potter, LUMA

The museum offers virtual exhibitions centered on space history, human imagination, and frontier themes, including art sent to the moon and space and digital and physical...

The Institute of Space Commerce is a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Austin, TX focused on expanding and enhancing the economic and commercial dimensions of the space industry ... what many call Space 2.0. It operates as an intellectual hub for policy, research, and global dialogue.

"Eutelsat was a monopoly, Inmarsat was a monopoly. And then you see the emergence, and now we have those very vital ecosystems. Everything from Starlink to remote sensing to other aspects of satellite communications." Michael Potter, The Institute of Space Commerce

This week on The Journal of Space Commerce...

There is a lot of work that goes into getting an idea off the drawing board and into space, and often, that process begins with a pitch to potential investors or government granting institutions. Orbital Velocity has won over $2 billion for previous clients, customers, and employers to bring their ideas to fruition.

"The secret for a space proposal is to know what they want before they do.” Jeff Nosanov

On this edition of The Journal of Space Commerce podcast, Tom Patton talks with Jeff Nosanov, the founder and CEO of Orbital Velocity and host of Th...

The FCC has approved a joint request from T-Mobile USA and SpaceX to waive several regulatory requirements, allowing more consumer smartphones to access satellite-based services under the Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) initiative.

The waiver permits handsets certified before June 29, 2024—but not yet authorized under satellite-specific rules—to connect to the Starlink satellite network via T-Mobile’s terrestrial infrastructure. This move aims to extend emergency and basic messaging services to remote and disaster-affected areas where traditional cellular coverage is unavailable.

T-Mobile and SpaceX argued that many compatible devices are already in use, but those devices can't...

On this edition of The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast, Tom Patton talks with Mary Glazkova, CEO of Mission Space. A hardware and software company that is an emerging player in space weather intelligence, Mission Space is developing real-time monitoring and forecasting solutions that safeguard both Earth-based and space-based infrastructure.

"Space weather has measurable and very immediate effects on systems we rely on every day." Mary Glazkova, Mission Space

The company's flagship technologies include a Space Weather Operation System (SWOS), a forecasting platform delivering 96-hour alerts with 500 km resolution that is powered by...

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On this edition of Ex Terra Extra, Ex Terra Media's Mike Turner and Tom Patton take a deep dive into the data included in the Satellite Industry Association's latest 'State of the Industry' Report, and then discuss possible shifts at NASA under President Trump and (we assume) soon to be confirmed Administrator Jaren...

The ISS National Laboratory is a research and development hub aboard the International Space Station (ISS), managed by a non-profit organization, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), under a cooperative agreement with NASA. They provide access to the unique microgravity environment of low Earth orbit for scientific experiments, medical research, and technological innovation.

"We go to space not for fun but because you can do these cool things." Phillip Irace, ISS National Lab

One of the key services provided by the ISS National Lab is facilitating collaboration between private...

The Aurelia Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dedicated to advancing humanity's future in space through research, education, and policy development. Their mission focuses on creating scalable space habitats, fostering public engagement with space exploration, and addressing the ethical and societal implications of life beyond Earth.

"Once they're in space they can form space stations, they're reusable, they're replaceable, and they can be used to form much larger structures.” Evan Hilgemann, Aurelia Institute

The TESSERAE Project is a modular, self-assembling space architecture system designed to autonomously construct habitats in microgravity en...

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce responsible for producing economic statistics that provide insight into the U.S. economy. In March 2025, it released a significant revision and update to its Space Economy Satellite Account (SESA), offering detailed data from 2012 through 2023.

"I think one of the stronger trends that we've seen in this new time series has been the shrinking of the information sector as a share of total space economy GDP.”Patrick Georgi, BEA

Products and services related to the Space Economy include th...

On this edition of The Ex Terra Podcast, Tom Patton talks with Dr. Don Platt, Director of The Spaceport Education Center at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT).

"I had a mentor who liked to say that the 20th century was the age of the specialist, and the 21st century was going to be the age of the generalist. Especially in a small company you're going to have a variety of different responsibilities.” Dr. Don Platt

The Spaceport Education Center (SEC) is a satellite campus of FIT specializing in graduate-level programs. Their Master of...

Marcantonio Global is a company that is dedicated to bridging the gap between cutting-edge technology and critical defense needs.

"I think that the lines between commercial space and the defense sector is blurring, with private innovators and innovations. If you're looking at rapid launch and surveillance that's been deployed to protect troops and national interest." Nino Marcantonio, Marcantonio Global

This week on The Ex Terra Podcast, Tom Patton talks with Nino Marcantonio, the founder and CEO of Marcantonio Global about how the firm works with space companies to make the right connections within...

There has been a lot of political change since we last talked with Dr. Namrata Goswami, both domestically and on the world stage.

“Overall, the analysis would be that 'well, this would mean that their space programs might also suffer'. But the data does not support (that)." Dr. Namrata Goswami

Uncertainty over tariffs is roiling the stock market, and international relations are shifting like an offshore sandbar. What does all that mean for space commerce, both in the U.S. and among our largest competitors ... China, Russia and India?

"When we th...