Inspector Smile, chapter 3: the countdown begins
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Inspector Smile, chapter 3: the countdown begins Inside Golden Dome’s push to court commercial tech firms and investors
Behind the classified architecture is a struggle over affordability, industrial scale and whether commercial space economics can work for national defense
Tomorrow.io adds $35 million to DeepSky funding round
Weather intelligence provider Tomorrow.io has added $35 million to its latest funding round, bringing the total to $210 million to accelerate development of a next-generation constellation for gathering atmospheric data.
House bill restores funding for TraCSS
A House appropriations bill would reverse plans by the administration to stop development of a civil space traffic management system.
New CSF Report Sees Up To 7,000+ Satellites Launched Annually By Mid 2030’s, Highlights The Challenges With US Launch Infrastructure
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 18, 2026 — The Commercial Space Federation (CSF), in partnership with Rational Futures (RF), announced the release of SCRUBBED: America’s Launch Capacity Challenge, a data-driven assessment of potential […]
European imaging companies step in to fill warzone gap
MILAN – As U.S. satellite imagery companies have pulled back from sharing visuals of Iran and the broader area around the Gulf conflict, European Earth-observation firms are moving to fill the vacuum.
Four NASA payloads to fly on Astrolab’s first lunar rover
WASHINGTON — Astrolab’s first lunar rover will carry four NASA payloads on a mission planned to launch later this year.
Smile lifts off on quest to reveal Earth’s invisible shield against the solar wind
The Smile spacecraft lifted off on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 04:52 BST / 05:52 CEST (00:52 local time) on 19 May 2026. The launch marks the beginning of an ambitious mission to better understand solar storms, geomagnetic storms, and the science of space weather.
Smile launch highlights
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ESA’s Smile satellite launched aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on at 04:52 BST / 05:52 CEST (00:52 local time) on 19 May 2026.
Smile flew to space on Vega-C flight VV29. At 35 m tall, a Vega-C weighs 210 tonnes on the launch pad and the rocket used three solid-propellant-powered stages to take Smile to orbit before the fourth liquid-propellant stage took over for a precise drop-off around Earth.Smile (the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese
ESA-China SMILE mission lifts off to deliver first global images of Earth’s magnetosphere
KOUROU, French Guiana — The SMILE mission developed jointly by the European Space Agency and China has reached orbit after more than a decade of preparations and cooperation.
