Feb. 25, 2026 By Caleb Henry For space companies, the sovereignty pitch has worked surprisingly well over the past year, especially for U.S. firms willing to invest abroad. Germany, after announcing €35 billion in future space spending, is becoming a prominent market for corporate strategic investments. Direct-to-cell startup AST SpaceMobile of the U.S. and Vodafone in the U.K. formed a JV that will build a satellite operations center in Germany . California satellite operator Planet Labs landed a €240M deal with the German government and is expanding satellite manufacturing to Berlin . And Finnish radar satellite company Iceye is building a €1.7B constellation with Germany’s Rheinmetall through a JV that includes a future factory in Neuss, Germany . But the recent hold-up of laser terminal builder Mynaric’s sale to Rocket Lab shows there are limits to the friendliness. The Mynaric acquisition, which was targeted to close in 2025, has stalled out as Germany continues to evaluate its impact. Amid the delay, rising German defense company Rheinmetall has offered a competing bid, a move that could keep Mynaric under domestic control. U.S. and European space industries remain closely tied, with companies often looking to invest on both sides of the Atlantic for a chance at greater market share. For the past several years, European companies have been especially eager to tap into the U.S. to participate in the Space Development Agency’s military pLEO constellation, which strained domestic supply chains. Now, as Europe moves to field its own constellations, IRIS2 through the European Union, and a new German constellation through the Bundeswehr, European supply chains are growing in importance. The same sovereignty winds that turbocharged some deals may take the air out of others. France has been blunt about vetoing space M&A deals based on sovereignty concerns. The most notable recent example is Eutelsat’s rejected ground segment sale to Swedish company EQT . The regulatory split follows French politician Bruno Le Maire’s blockage of satellite analytics company Preligens from acquisition by non-EU players in 2024. Paris-based Safran bought the company that same year. Should Germany block the Rocket Lab-Mynaric sale, it would mark a continuation of that trend and serve as an important bellwether for German aerospace and defense M&A. Germany is home to many small- to medium-sized enterprises in the space sector that could become attractive investment targets as sovereign demand climbs. Will Germany allow that to happen? Laser terminals have emerged as a critical technology for proliferated LEO constellations, and are an area Germany leads thanks to decades of investment. Mynaric struggled to scale up its production and went into the German equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2025. Rocket Lab identified the company as a diamond in the rough. Now it’s up to German regulators to determine who gets to polish it.25 [or, one year ago]. Rocket Lab identified the company as a diamond in the rough. Now it’s up to German regulators to determine who gets to polish it. Link: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article699846344f25149ec09b0512/mynaric-rheinmetall-erwaegt-uebernahme-von-deutschem-laser-spezialisten.html

Feb. 9, 2026 (updated Feb. 12, 2026) by Chris Quilty and Caleb Henry Following a lull in 2024, satcom operators ordered 11 GEO satellites in 2025 – the industry’s best total since 2016. Orders were about equally split between traditional large GEOs and increasingly popular Small GEO platforms. Only three orders were directed at growth-oriented applications, with the balance representing replacement satellites, government focused initiatives, and a first-of-its-kind satellite leasing order for two satellites.  Thales Alenia Space led traditional manufacturers with three orders for the company’s workhorse SpaceBus 4000, while Maxar (now Lanteris) inked two orders for the company’s 1300-Series satellite. Airbus received one order for its OneSat software-defined satellite – only the second order since 2021 – as the still unproven product line awaits its first launch in 2027. In the Small GEO category, newcomer AscendArc was the surprise leader, winning its first satellite order in September from Kt Sat, followed by a two-satellite order from SLI, a space asset leasing company, in December. Astranis and Swissto12, which together have been awarded 80% of Small GEOs ordered since 2020, each picked up one satellite order.  Small GEOs, which first appeared in 2018, have swept up 20 of 47 GEO satellite orders since 2020 due to their relatively low cost and focused capacity, making them ideal for new operators (Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom), new applications (Astrum Mobile’s first-of-kind Satellite-to-Device platform), or targeted market expansion (Kt sat’s consumer broadband push).  Notably, two Omani entities placed GEO satellite orders in quick succession: government-owned Space Communication Technologies (SCT) purchased a software-defined Airbus OneSat in November 2025, followed two months later by MB Group's Small GEO order with Astranis in January 2026. Ironically, the latter order is scheduled to launch this year, while SCT's OmanSat-1 is projected to launch in 2029. Time will tell which platform delivers the best economic return and staying power in the face of growing LEO competition.

Jan. 21, 2026 by Quilty Space Editorial Board Our initial review of Blue Origin’s FCC filings indicates that TeraWave is a space-based transport backbone, not a consumer or managed-access satellite network. The system is positioned as an alternative or complement to terrestrial and subsea fiber, optimized to move very large volumes of data between fixed endpoints for  enterprise, data center | cloud providers, and government (civil, defense, national security). Classification is key TeraWave is an NGSO Fixed-Satellite Service (FSS) system. FSS, by definition, implies fixed locations, high-gain antennas, scheduled capacity, and infrastructure-style economics, rather than mobile or population-based access. Nothing in the filing resembles a consumer broadband or mobility service: No subscriber counts No population coverage framing No mobility classes or handheld terminals This is infrastructure, not retail connectivity. How the system is structured The architecture is explicitly multi-orbit and layered: LEO (5,280 satellites) acts as the access layer, using Q | V-band links to connect fixed user terminals at enterprise and government locations. MEO (128 satellites) forms a long-haul transport layer, using laserlinks to move traffic across the network. Ground delivery is handled via optical and E-band RF gateways, which aggregate traffic and interface with terrestrial networks. This is a backbone design: traffic enters the system at fixed sites, moves across a dedicated transport layer, and exits near its destination to rejoin terrestrial infrastructure. The press release references optical downlink capacity of up to 6 Tbps. Whether that figure reflects per-satellite performance or aggregate system capacity is not specified, though aggregate capacity is the most plausible interpretation. What is clear is that the architecture assumes: Laserlinks enable high aggregate network throughput The satellites function as routers and transport nodes Who the customers really are In this model, a “customer” is not a person or device. It is a site. Examples include: A hyperscale data center like Oracle A government or defense facility A remote but critical infrastructure node A network exchange point or gateway - connected enterprise site This is why large customer counts can coexist with very low user (100k) density. One site equals one customer, even if tens of thousands of people ultimately use the data behind it. Why this looks like a hyperscaler play The filing repeatedly cites: Cloud migration AI workloads East–west traffic between data centers The cost and fragility of fiber diversity Those are hyperscaler problems, not ISP problems. Oracle is therefore a plausible anchor customer, even though no customer is named. TeraWave looks well-suited for: Data center interconnect Burst capacity during replication events Disaster recovery and continuity insurance Physically diverse paths where fiber is constrained or geopolitically risky That does not make it exclusive to hyperscalers, but it does strongly shape the design. Why this is not an access-network competitor TeraWave does not appear designed to: Replace consumer broadband Compete for managed satcom service contracts Displace GEO or MEO service providers delivering end-to-end services Instead, it functions as transport infrastructure that can sit beneath other services, including terrestrial networks and satellite access systems. Technical ambition = real hurdles The filing describes an ambitious system with meaningful execution risks: Scaled deployment of Q | V-band phased-array user terminals, a capability that has not yet been demonstrated at commercial scale Ultra-high-capacity optical terminals that remain unproven outside limited demonstrations Severe rain fade and atmospheric sensitivity across Q | V- and E-band links Gateway aggregation requirements in the multi-hundreds of gigabits per second Long-haul laserlinks in MEO, with tighter pointing and control requirements than LEO End-to-end orchestration at backbone scale, closer to Tier-1 carrier engineering than traditional satcom These hurdles reinforce that this is a long-term infrastructure build, not a near-term commercial service launch. Final Takeaways TeraWave is best described as a space-based fiber corollary: Fixed sites, not people Capacity, not subscriptions Guaranteed service levels, not "best effort" Backbone economics, not ISP economics The system’s design aligns with hyperscaler and government transport needs while remaining structurally complementary to existing satellite services (e.g. , Amazon Leo). While Blue Origin will likely pursue a vertically integrated approach, the TeraWave architecture leaves room for specialized partners. Optical ground station providers such as Cailabs are natural fits for the system’s optical ground segment, while companies like K2 Space, with platforms optimized for high-power payloads, could plausibly support the MEO transport layer if Blue Origin chooses not to build all spacecraft internally. Perhaps the most consequential implication of TeraWave is on the launch side. A constellation of this scale would give Blue Origin a built-in anchor customer for New Glenn, mirroring the Starlink model of vertical integration. The flip side is that New Glenn capacity in the 2027–2028 timeframe would likely be constrained internally, leaving limited availability for third-party missions. Source: https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-origin-introduces-terawave-space-based-network-for-global-connectivity FCC Filing: ICFS Callsign Summary Page - ICFS Portal