The Commerce Department's FY 2026 budget request threatens the continued growth of the space economy and U.S. leadership in promoting safe and responsible space use, the Secure World Foundation wrote Thursday. The budget proposal would greatly reduce funding for the Office of Space Commerce and kill its Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). The foundation said commercial space situational awareness (SSA) providers can't fill all the gaps left by ending TraCSS. While commercial SSA providers have developed observation and tracking capabilities and advanced analytics to assess possible conjunctions, it's questionable whether space safety should be delegated to the private sector, Secure World said. Many commercial SSA services are designed for DOD requirements and missions, so it's unclear whether they will be appropriate for civil and commercial space safety needs, it said. The U.S. government has freely provided space safety data to all operators globally since 2009 because it benefited the U.S. to have a stable, predictable space environment, the group noted. That, in turn, promoted the U.S. as a leading space power, and TraCSS would help the country maintain that position, it added.

SES' now-finalized takeover of Intelsat (see 2507170002) is a sign of satellite communication's center of gravity shifting permanently from geostationary orbit (GSO) incumbents to low earth orbit (LEO) disruptors, Quilty Space wrote last week. GSO's declining dominance due to the rise of LEO and stagnating broadcast revenue, among other issues, has been plain to see for years, it said. Quilty cited operator responses such as Telesat moving away from GSO in favor of its LightSpeed LEO system, Eutelsat buying OneWeb, and Viasat acquiring Inmarsat and now teasing direct-to-device services and multi-orbit offerings. SES' near-term priorities are integrating Intelsat, cutting costs and reducing its use of debt, according to Quilty. Beyond that, SES must set a course "that not only fends off emerging LEO competitors but also accelerates growth beyond its current high-single-digit targets."

Despite calls for an international system of space traffic management, there continues to be no actual movement in that direction, Rand Corp. researcher Doug Ligor said Thursday on the group's Policy Minded podcast. "We continue to rely on the idea that we're going to develop voluntary norms of behavior and rules from a bottom-up approach," said Ligor, director of the management, technology and capabilities program for Rand's Homeland Security Research Division. However, Ligor added, "it's not working. We don't have positive norms of behavior." The U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has failed to come to consensus on multiple issues, he noted.

SES said Thursday it had closed on its $3.1 billion acquisition of Intelsat, 15 months after the deal was announced (see 2404300048). FCC approval came last week (see 2507110066). “Today, we’re not just merging two companies -- we’re creating a stronger company, built for the future,” said SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh. SES said the purchase helps it explore potential growth markets such as IoT, direct-to-device communications, inter-satellite data relay, space situational awareness and quantum key distribution.

Arguments that low earth orbit broadband can't meet BEAD capacity requirements and that LEO lacks scalability are incorrect, Joe Kane, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation director-broadband and spectrum policy, wrote this week on the group's website. Kane said LEO service can exceed 100 Mbps downloads, which is more than adequate for consumer use. While LEO upload speeds fall short of 20 Mbps in some areas, wireline upload speeds in those same areas "are precisely zero; the alternative fiber networks don’t exist," he said. Kane said LEO networks are scalable as they launch new satellites and account for the cost to replace them over time. Any BEAD fund awards come with enforceable obligations to meet performance standards, he said. Criticisms that LEO broadband is more expensive wrongly compare urban wireline rates to rural Starlink rates, as consumer prices will always be lower in more densely populated areas, according to Kane. He said absent USF funding, rural wireline broadband would be more expensive than SpaceX's Starlink service.

By opposing Globalstar's planned C-3 satellite system, SpaceX and Kepler are trying to disadvantage a competitor and get access to its 1.6/2.4 GHz spectrum, Globalstar told the FCC Space Bureau in a filing posted Wednesday. Globalstar said an accompanying Roberson and Associates study shows the bands can't support more than one mobile satellite service (MSS) operator. "Physics dictates that the operation of SpaceX’s mega-constellation or any other new entrant’s system in the 1.6/2.4 GHz band would inevitably cause extensive harmful interference to Globalstar’s licensed services," it said. That C-3 uses technology different from Globalstar's existing constellation isn't evidence other entities could provide service in the band without harming Globalstar. The satellite operator waved off claims the spectrum is underused, saying it "robustly uses its few megahertz of spectrum for a variety of mobile satellite offerings with considerable public interest benefits," including satellite IoT, its "SPOT family" of satellite-enabled communications devices and Apple's direct-to-device service for the iPhone 14, 15 and 16. Globalstar urged approval of its U.S. market access request for C-3 (see 2502280001).

While HughesNet's latency has been decreasing in recent years and is now essentially tied with Viasat, neither geostationary orbit (GSO) operator comes close to competing with SpaceX on latency, Ookla said Tuesday. It said their download speeds are increasing but also remain well below Starlink's. Citing its Speedtest data, Ookla said HughesNet more than doubled its median download speeds from 20.87 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 47.79 Mbps in Q1 2025, while Viasat went from 25.18 Mbps to 49.12 Mbps. However, U.S. Speedtest users on SpaceX's Starlink network saw their median download speeds nearly double from 53.95 Mbps in Q3 2022 to 104.71 Mbps in Q1 2025, according to Ookla. It said the GSO operators also struggle to compete with Starlink in upload speeds. HughesNet's median upload speed grew from 2.87 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 4.44 Mbps in Q1 2025 -- still far lower than Starlink's median upload speed of 14.84 Mbps in Q1 2025. It said Viasat's median upload speed has been declining, from 3.06 Mbps in Q1 2022 to 1.08 Mbps in Q1 2025.

Orbital debris removal startup Kall Morris said Tuesday it had completed the first commercial demonstration of capturing unprepared objects in space. It said its robotic tentacle system was launched in November on a SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, where it was used in six separate test sessions. Those tests showed "objects in space don’t necessarily need a docking adapter or other specialized hardware to receive services from a 'tow-truck in space' and get objects to where customers want them," said Kall Morris CEO Troy Morris.

An amateur radio operator in Germany is petitioning the FCC to deny AST SpaceMobile's request to conduct telemetry, tracking and control operations in 430-440 MHz. In a petition posted Tuesday (docket 25-201), Mario Lorenz said the band is allocated in Europe to amateur radio on a co-primary basis and heavily used. Under ITU rules, the FCC would have to find that AST’s proposed use is incapable of causing harmful interference to international radio service, including amateur radio, but the record doesn't support that finding, said Lorenz.

Commercial space launch company Firefly Aerospace said Friday that it's planning an initial public offering. Its registration filed with the SEC doesn't provide an expected date. Firefly said at the end of March it had a launch backlog worth $1.1 billion.