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Today on Telemetry, we open with Boeing wins $2B MUOS deal and dig into China's 7-meter rocket clues. There's fresh coverage too across Missions & Launches, Business, Science, and Policy & Defense.

Boeing won a contract worth up to $2 billion to build two replacement satellites for the Mobile User Objective System, the Pentagon's primary narrowband military communications network, beating out Lockheed Martin, which built all five satellites currently in the constellation. The award covers design, development, production, and testing, with delivery targeted by 2035. MUOS connects troops, ships, aircraft, and special operations forces through geostationary satellites operating in the ultra-high-frequency band, valued by the military because UHF signals penetrate foliage, urban terrain, and some weather. The Space Force took over the network from the Navy in 2023 and launched the service life extension competition as the existing satellites, launched starting in 2012, approach the end of their operational lives. Despite rapid growth in commercial satellite communications, the Pentagon has maintained that secure narrowband connectivity requires dedicated government infrastructure.

Source: SpaceNews

A 65-hour imaging survey with Webb's NIRCam instrument has resolved 16.5 million individual stars inside Messier 82, the Cigar Galaxy, 12 million light-years away. Previous observatories including Hubble and Spitzer were largely blocked by the galaxy's dense dust; Webb's infrared sensitivity cut through it to reveal the galaxy's distended, asymmetrical disk structure in detail for the first time. M82 is a starburst galaxy, meaning it forms stars at an unusually high rate, likely triggered by a past merger with another galaxy. The asymmetric disk shape visible in the new data supports that merger hypothesis. Researchers plan to use the stellar population data as a fossil record to reconstruct how M82 formed and what drives the massive outflows of material streaming away from its center.

Source: NASA Press Releases

With NASA having paused Gateway development in favor of a lunar surface base, ESA has laid out separate paths for each of its three planned contributions. Work on the Lunar I-Hab habitation module will continue through its critical design review before ESA decides whether to redirect it. Development of the Lunar View logistics module will slow, with ESA preserving key deep-space technologies rather than pressing toward full development. The Lunar Link communications system is being assessed for use as a standalone asset or as part of ESA's Moonlight lunar communications constellation. Broader clarity on ESA's role in Artemis is expected at a December ministerial meeting in Italy, where member states are set to define Europe's exploration roadmap for the coming years.

Source: European Spaceflight

Rocket Lab launched the second Victus Haze spacecraft just 16 hours and 42 minutes after receiving the Space Force's launch order on June 19, beating Firefly Aerospace's previous tactically responsive space record by more than 10 hours. The Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand and delivered Rocket Lab's Pioneer spacecraft to low Earth orbit, where it has since completed checkout and begun chasing True Anomaly's Jackal satellite, which SpaceX launched in May as the target vehicle. The upcoming rendezvous and proximity operations phase will simulate threat-response scenarios against a non-compliant satellite. Victus Haze is also the first such mission executed by a single prime contractor handling the rocket, spacecraft, and on-orbit operations.

Source: Space.com

Commercial tracking firm LeoLabs detected an unknown object near China's Shenlong reusable space plane on June 22, assessed with high confidence to have been released from the vehicle. The U.S. Space Force has since catalogued it independently. Shenlong, now on its fourth mission since launching in February 2026, has a pattern of similar activity: a subsatellite release was observed in mid-2024, and the vehicle has previously conducted rendezvous and proximity operations, maneuvering close to other objects in orbit. Those capabilities have dual-use implications, applicable to satellite servicing but also to potential interference with adversary spacecraft.

Source: Space.com

Upcoming Launches

OHB is selling roughly 1.7 million shares at €300 each, netting €490 million after expenses, which will lift its public float from about 5% to nearly 20% while the Fuchs family retains a 60% controlling stake. The Bremen-based satellite manufacturer plans to spread the capital across expanded production facilities, emerging capabilities like lunar exploration, selective acquisitions in Europe, and financial support for Rocket Factory Augsburg, its 65%-owned small launch vehicle startup. RFA's first orbital attempt with the expendable RFA ONE Block 1 is imminent at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, with a reusable Block 2 version targeting first flight in 2028.

Source: SpaceNews

Dublin-based Ubotica Technologies closed an $11M round co-led by Ireland's Act Venture Capital and Finland's Greencode Ventures to scale its satellite-based maritime intelligence platform. The company's edge-processing approach runs AI models directly on orbiting satellites rather than downlinking raw data, cutting the time between collection and actionable insight. Its platform can dynamically task optical, SAR, and RF satellites to get the best sensor over a target area, and because the software is hardware-agnostic, it can run on any satellite with onboard compute. Ubotica says it has validated the approach across more than ten missions and is now targeting multiple maritime security customers globally.

Source: Payload Space

Hubble has captured ionizing ultraviolet light leaking out of galaxy MXDFz4.4, which existed 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, making it the earliest confirmed example of a galaxy actively clearing the neutral hydrogen fog that once made the universe opaque. The galaxy is roughly 100 times smaller than the Milky Way but forms stars about 10 times faster, and its tightly packed young stars are blasting 50–100% of their energetic light into the surrounding gas. Supernova explosions from short-lived massive stars punch additional holes, amplifying the effect. Webb data helped confirm the star formation happened in distinct bursts, and VLT observations pinned down the galaxy's age. Before this, the earliest confirmed ionizing source dated to when the universe was 1.6 billion years old.

Source: Phys.org – Space

Kennedy Space Center's aging power, gas, and road systems are on track to hit capacity by 2030, when annual launches from NASA ranges are projected to reach 268, up from 109 this year. NASA's inspector general estimates at least $1 billion is needed to upgrade the infrastructure, but construction and maintenance budgets have been cut 11–47% over the past five years. A compounding problem: roughly 70% of launches from NASA ranges are commercial, yet the agency is currently barred from charging those operators for shared infrastructure. The IG recommended NASA prioritize $250 million included in the reconciliation bill for electrical, gas, and road fixes, and study whether fee collection from commercial users is legally possible.

Source: Payload Space

Three indirect signals suggest CALT, China's main launch vehicle developer, is working on a new intermediate rocket in the 7-meter diameter class. A CASC procurement tender for tank-dome welding tooling, a 7.5-meter stainless steel ring accepted by CALT engineers, and Hainan launch site expansion plans all point in the same direction. A 2023 internal CALT presentation had outlined a 7-meter vehicle capable of lifting 25,000–50,000 kg to low Earth orbit. No designation has been announced and the program has no public profile.

Source: SpaceNews

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