Launch Manifests Are Becoming Spectrum Policy
The FCC's conditional waiver of Amazon Leo's 1,616-satellite milestone ties spectrum rights to launch capacity, a precedent every NGSO operator will feel.
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The Signal is our editorial vantage point—focused and tuned to what moves the market. It delivers analysis and perspective from SatNews, focused on signal over noise.
Three LEO Operators Bet 2026 on a Supply Chain Built for 2027
AST SpaceMobile and Eutelsat OneWeb have committed to 2026 subscriber targets that, by SatNews's analysis, lean on a merchant RF supply chain ramping in fiscal 2027. Amazon Leo, on its own custom silicon, is a distinct case.
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American military space closed around one company in seven days
Two SpaceX contracts, a House mark dissolving SDA, and a New Glenn pad fire — read together, they ended the multi-prime model for U.S. military space.
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What the SpaceX IPO Changes for Every Satellite Operator
A public SpaceX means earnings-driven launch pricing, mandatory disclosure, and a two-player infrastructure duopoly with Amazon reshaping unit economics for every mid-tier satellite operator.
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The Downlink Deficit: The Pentagon’s Optical Mesh Network and the Terrestrial Bottleneck
The satellite industry has built roughly 10 percent of the optical ground infrastructure it needs. Without 200 to 500 optical ground stations, the Pentagon's $35 billion PWSA and $185 billion Golden Dome programs risk becoming stranded assets — data moves flawlessly in orbit but cannot reach the ground.
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Defense Economics and the European SmallSat Market
Europe is the only major space power building its smallsat sector on defense procurement rather than venture capital or state industrial policy. The demand signal is institutional, contracted, and accelerating.
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The FCC Must Choose: Enforce the Rules or Preserve LEO Competition
The FCC faces its most consequential regulatory moment in commercial satellite communications since the original Starlink licensing approval.
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Dual-Use by Design: Telesat Lightspeed and the End of Civilian Telecom in LEO
Telesat’s decision to hardwire 500 MHz of military Ka-band spectrum into Lightspeed’s first 156 satellites resolved a near-term financing crisis. It also created a targeting problem that no commercial service agreement can fix.
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The Pentagon’s SmallSats Have An Amnesia Problem
The aerospace and defense industry has universally accepted that the future of orbital superiority lies in proliferated, software-defined constellations. The mandate from the Space Development Agency (SDA), with support from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), is clear: move away from vulnerable, exquisite "battlestars" and build agile, interconnected data networks in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). But while our architectural theory has evolved, the hardware foundation we are building it on is trapped in a dangerous compromise.
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Rheinmetall Walked Away. Germany Should Take the Hint.
With Rheinmetall officially abandoning its alternative bid for Mynaric, Germany's justification for blocking Rocket Lab's $150 million acquisition has collapsed. Over 90% of Mynaric's backlog is U.S. DoD money — the company was never a sovereign German asset in any operational sense.
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