Commercial spaceflight news from Cosmic Herald — SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, private space stations, and the new space economy.
SpaceX's 80th Starlink mission of 2026 flies from California, not Florida, because Falcon 9's Cape Starlink run ended Aug. 25 after roughly 260 flights. Starship is supposed to pick up the slack before year-end, and the FAA has already cleared 44 launches a year at LC-39A.
Read the story →NASA picked Blue Origin over a competing Rocket Lab bid for a ~$700 million contract to build a Blue Ring-based Mars telecom orbiter due at the Red Planet by 2030.
Germany's Isar Aerospace flew its Spectrum rocket to orbit from Norway's Andøya Spaceport on September 5, the first orbital launch ever from mainland Western Europe, 18 months after its debut ended in a pad-side crash.
Rocket Lab launched its 94th Electron before dawn on September 3, deploying a Synspective radar satellite in a mission that also doubled as a routine demonstration of the FAA's new unified Part 450 launch licensing rules.
Sierra Space says its long-delayed Dream Chaser spaceplane will carry national security, civil and NASA cargo payloads together on one debut flight from Kennedy Space Center to Vandenberg.
A Falcon 9 booster flew for a record 35th time out of Vandenberg early Sept. 2, deploying 27 more Starlink satellites and sticking its droneship landing in the Pacific.
Germany's OHB landed a nearly €1 billion SES contract to build all 18 IRIS² medium-Earth-orbit satellites, the first hardware award since the EU's sovereign connectivity program signed its implementation agreement in early August.
SpaceX and Louisiana officials announced a $100 billion Gulf Coast spaceport with ten launch pads and, per Elon Musk, more than 30 Starship flights a day once built out.
NASA on-ramped four companies — All Points Logistics, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, and L3Harris — to a $100 million payload processing contract that expands where commercial providers can prep spacecraft for launch.
SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets from opposite U.S. coasts just 38.5 minutes apart on Aug. 15, 2026, setting a new back-to-back cadence record with a Globalstar replenishment mission from Florida and the classified USSF-366 flight from California.
Virgin Galactic told investors its new Delta-class spaceship won't fly paying customers until February 2027, blaming a pile-up of tiny tolerance and installation snags rather than one big failure.
Firefly Aerospace's Q2 10-Q and August 11 investor call confirm the Alpha Block 2 debut has slipped to Q4 2026, after an in-flight booster rupture and a September 2025 test-stand explosion forced a heavier redesign.
Free daily briefing — missions, discoveries, and what's overhead tonight.
You're in. ✓
Check your inbox to confirm your subscription.No spam. Unsubscribe any time. Read our privacy policy.
