October 17, 2025 - Written by Caleb Henry   Over the past 24 months, Iceye has won seven sovereign customers, many of them ministries of defense, for purchases of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites that the company historically built solely for its own constellation. The orders tally 21 firm satellites, plus options for 23 more (20 for Japan, 3 for Poland), excluding Iceye’s €158M domestic deal with the Finnish Defence Forces for an undisclosed number of satellites. Iceye’s latest deal, for four satellites to Japan-based IHI Corporation with options for 20 more, shows how Iceye is capitalizing on areas of geospatial growth. It's the second major foreign deal this year in Japan, following Planet Labs’ order for 10 satellites from Sky Perfect JSAT, Japan’s largest telecom satellite operator. Some satellite industry veterans have voiced concerns about manufacturing deals cannibalizing the EO customer base, as buyers of satellites may have less need to purchase third-party data from Iceye or others. This is a valid concern, but there are still compelling reasons for Iceye to continue with its current strategy. First, Iceye often sets up joint ventures with local partners (Space42 in the UAE, Rheinmetall in Germany), giving the company access to enduring revenue streams as domestic constellations are built. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there’s nothing stopping Iceye’s customers, many of them focused heavily on sovereign capabilities, from buying satellites from another manufacturer if Iceye had refused. While not every country can afford space programs with high-resolution satellites and accompanying ground infrastructure, we expect this trend to continue. Electro-optical imaging companies have signed several notable deals in the past 24 months (BlackSky with the Indonesian MoD,  Planet in Germany , and ImageSat with an undisclosed Asian customer).  Other geospatial companies have noticed this trend (Umbra, Albedo, Satellogic, etc.) and are increasingly offering space hardware deals alongside or in lieu of remote sensing data and analytics. Link: https://www.iceye.com/newsroom/press-releases/iceye-and-ihi-sign-agreement-to-build-an-earth-observation-satellite-constellation

October 7, 2025 - Written by Caleb Henry A Firefly engine hot firing. Credit: Firefly Aerospace Firefly’s surprise weekend announcement that it is buying software specialist SciTec shows how aggressively the company is moving to become a full-fledged space and defense company not defined solely, or even predominantly, by launch. The $855 million deal, comprised of $300 million in cash and $555 million in stock, is nearly as much as what Firefly raised in its IPO ($868 million) just two months ago. SciTec adds 475 employees to Firefly’s ~800, growing headcount by roughly 60% and reshaping Firefly into a bigger contender for Golden Dome work. Compared with the other U.S. launch companies that went public this decade – Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit – Firefly’s evolution is the most rapid from a financial standpoint. In its first few months as a public entity, Firefly is outpacing what Rocket Lab spent in four years on M&A. Why the urgency? First, it’s conventional wisdom now that launch as a standalone offering is a hard business, especially absent a large government anchor contract, which Firefly lacks. The total market is only $5-7 billion dollars per annum, which is then divided into smaller buckets defined by launch mass, orbital inclination, and national sovereignty. Firefly already expanded beyond launch in years prior with its lunar landers and Elytra multi-mission spacecraft, but the foray into defense expands its total addressable market by an order of magnitude. Rocket Lab, a peer competitor, demonstrated the effectiveness of diversifying into spacecraft manufacturing and defense over the course of six acquisitions since 2021. Virgin Orbit, on the other hand, adopted the novel approach of making minority investments into potential customers (SatRevolution, Arqit, Horizon Technologies, etc.), which left the company with no tangible revenue-producing assets when its launch business stumbled. As a result, the company was liquidated two years after its IPO. (To be fair, Virgin Orbit was late to the SPAC IPO fad, and the $228M it raised was less than half the company's target, leaving it more cash strapped than comparable launch IPOs). Second, missile defense is hot, and that’s with or without Golden Dome. SciTec is a subcontractor under General Dynamics Mission Systems for the ground segment of the Space Development Agency’s PWSA missile warning constellation, and counts the Missile Defense Agency among its customers. Future spending on Golden Dome amplifies this market opportunity. Third, software talent is an increasingly needed but tough skill set for space companies to obtain, especially in the age of AI. Acquiring SciTech enables Firefly to quickly acqui-hire a talented pool of software engineers rather than manually scraping together the capability through a laborious and lengthy hiring process. SciTec is a cash-flow positive business, and as a software company, likely has margins that surpass what Firefly obtains from its hardware-centric business. The acquisition puts Firefly on an accelerated track to profitability with the workforce and product offerings needed to capitalize on the surge in U.S. missile defense spending. Link: https://investors.fireflyspace.com/events/event-details/firefly-aerospace-announces-acquisition-scitec

October 3, 2025 - Written by Caleb Henry DLR antennas in Neustrelitz. Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) The blessing and curse of European space policy is the continent’s “do it together” approach. By pooling spending through the European Space Agency and the European Union (two separate entities), Europe can do far more collectively than it can as two dozen separate countries. The tradeoff, however, is that countries must sacrifice some of their individual goals for the sake of the group. The collective approach worked well for several key projects, like the Copernicus remote sensing fleet, the Galileo navigation constellation, and various space exploration programs (Gaia, Euclid, etc.). But in recent years, it’s grown clear that Germany was feeling hamstrung on national priorities. On launch, Germany was less enthused  than France about subsidizing Ariane 6 and more interested in supporting domestic startups. On the IRIS 2  constellation, Germany called the program too expensive , and last year dismissed it as “ too French. ” And in June, Germany’s DLR gave a tepid response to the pan-European remote sensing constellation, European Resilience from Space (ERS), now in the planning phases. Alongside these fissures, Bundeswehr the German military, started mulling a national constellation of hundreds of satellites, a conversation that spilled into the open  in April.  Last week, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius pledged €35B ($41B) through 2030 on an array of military space programs. This was followed by Major General Michael Traut outlining high-level plans for this constellation  of hundreds of satellites doing everything from telecom and imaging to RF mapping and missile warning. The final push for this sovereign constellation was not EU friction, but a strained relationship with the U.S. and Russian aggression on the ground and in orbit. Germany’s surging space spending could radically reshape the country and Europe. Already, Germany is the world’s fourth-largest defense spender , following the U.S., Russia, and China, but space was not a major area of investment. Now, per Handelsblatt, space spending is poised to increase sixfold, adding the equivalent of ESA’s annual budget to Germany’s domestic programs every year for the next five years. What does this mean for Germany’s space sector? Already, there is a heavy expectation that German companies will be best positioned to benefit from the spending surge. Spacecraft manufacturer OHB’s stock price doubled after Pistorius’s speech. Creating a constellation of the size and scope described by Gen. Traut will impact all elements of the space ecosystem and will illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of Germany’s space sector. How German can the constellation be, and to what extent will the vision depend on the whole of Europe? Quilty Space evaluated the following areas: Launch.  Launching a constellation of hundreds of satellites will require a serious launch effort. This will put pressure on Germany’s emerging small launch providers like Isar Aerospace, HyImpulse and RFA. Germany has several of the world’s premier launch startups, but all are building small rockets with between 500-1,500 kg of capacity to low Earth orbit. For a raft of reasons (cost, cadence, schedule), no megaconstellation has launched on small rockets. Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon, and Telesat all rely on medium or heavy-lift rockets that can deploy satellites by the dozens. This will put pressure on German launch startups to build bigger rockets, and in the near term, positions Arianespace as the key launch provider. Love it or hate it, the Ariane 6 is the only European launch vehicle capable of quickly deploying a constellation (and it doesn’t hurt that the upper stage is built in Germany ). Satellite manufacturing.  OHB is skilled at building remote sensing and navigation satellites, but the range of payloads required for the future German constellation will demand more skill sets. Satellite communications is not one of OHB’s strengths, and there are no public German radiofrequency mapping companies, suggesting this is also a new skillset requirement. Infrared missile-warning sensors share some technical heritage with weather satellites, but adaptation is non-trivial. If Germany wants to speedily deploy a multi-purpose constellation, it will have to rely on a whole-of-Europe approach while new competencies are built up domestically. This is also true at the component level. Germany is adept at building optical crosslinks and solar arrays, but it will need to industrialize dozens of components (propulsion, reaction wheels, etc.) if it wants a domestic supply chain that can support a megaconstellation. Ground segment.  Germany is home to some prominent teleports, both independent (Media Broadcast Satellite, IABG, Talia, Horizon) and corporate (SES, ABS, Hispasat), that could anchor a future constellation. Germany is also home to the second-highest number of data centers in the world  after the U.S., providing lots of potential host sites for constellation ground infrastructure. The data routing and processing needs of a multi-purpose constellation will be significant, given the large volumes of data generated and the need, especially with missile warning, for low latency. If not done well, this could handicap a constellation, a la GPS-3, MUOS and OneWeb. The leading vendors for ground segment equipment (gateways, not terminals) are in the U.S., Israel, and Spain. Ensuring sovereign ground will require maturing this sector alongside manufacturing and launch.   Link: https://www.bmvg.de/de/aktuelles/weltraumkongress-verteidigungsminister-sicherheit-5996640