5–6 minutes

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.

The mission’s Vega C rocket lifted off at 11:52 p.m. Eastern, May 18 (0352 UTC, or 0052 local time, May 19) from Kourou, French Guiana, in South America. SMILE separated from the launch vehicle’s fourth stage nearly 57 minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft’s solar arrays deployed successfully minutes later, prompting celebrations at the Jupiter Mission Control Room.

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission is designed to spend a planned mission time of three years studying how Earth’s magnetosphere interacts with solar storms and the ability to predict the impacts of space weather.

The 2,200-kilogram Smile spacecraft, including 1,500 kg of propellant, was launched into a roughly 706-kilometer orbit inclined by 70 degrees. From here, Smile will use around 90 percent of its propellant over the next month to reach its highly elliptical science orbit.

Smile will reach an apogee of around 121,000 kilometers above the North Pole, providing the spacecraft a unique, global view of the Earth’s magnetosphere with its wide-angle X-ray SXI and UVI ultraviolet cameras. Smile will use its passes over the South Pole at a perigee of around 5,000 km to downlink data to DLR’s O’Higgins Antarctic ground station. The highly elliptical orbit will also allow Smile to make 45 hours of continuous aurora observations during each of its 51-hour period orbits.

“We have a magnetic field, just like a shell for the Earth, but we have never known what shape this is. But the Smile mission will take the first images of this magneto pulse,” Wang Chi, director general of the National Space Science Center (NSSC), told SpaceNews before the launch, stating that previous space science missions could only deliver local measurements of these dynamics.

“If we succeed with this imaging, as solar activity varies, we can study the movement of this magnetic pulse, and how mass and energy is transported from the solar wind,” Wang said. “I think this is very important to predict space weather.”

Geomagnetic storms have previously brought down power grids and disrupted global communications, with a repeat of the most intense storm on record—the Carrington Event in 1859 which damaged telegraph networks—estimated to cost trillions of dollars in damage today.

Smile was jointly developed by the European Space Agency and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The mission was selected competitively in 2015 from among 13 proposals made by joint ESA-CAS teams spanning in astrophysics, heliophysics and fundamental physics.

Smile’s four scientific instruments include the soft X-ray (SXI) and ultraviolet (UVI) imagers, and in-situ ion analyzer and magnetometer instruments. The largest is SXI, developed by the UK’s Leicester University, and uses lobster-eye optics and some of the largest CCDs ever flown in space, cooled to minus 120 degrees Celsius. X-ray imaging of the magnetosphere focuses on solar wind charge exchange emission, produced when highly charged solar wind ions interact with neutral atoms. The combination of imagers and in-situ payloads will deliver views of global response while simultaneously measuring the particles driving it.

“For the first time ever, we will be able to understand cause and effect,” ESA science director Carole Mundell said during a pre-launch press conference. “This is critically important scientifically, but even more importantly, because nowadays modern life depends very much on our space infrastructure.”

The mission faced years of delays, including a change of components following an export control assessment in 2020 and disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. Both sides however hailed the results of the partnership.

“Not only have we learned to speak one another’s languages, we’ve also learned to speak different languages of engineering, different ways of doing science, and we’ve learned from one another along the way,” Mundell said.

The launch was the seventh of the Vega C, and the first in which Italian company Avio took on the launch operator role.

4–5 minutes

Virgin Galactic’s first next-generation suborbital spaceplane was moved from an assembly hangar to a testing hangar as it nears completion. Credit: Virgin Galactic

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic said May 14 it remains on track, technically and financially, to start commercial flights of its next-generation suborbital spaceplane before the end of the year.

In a first-quarter earnings call, company executives said work on its first SpaceShip vehicle is on schedule, with the completed airframe recently moving from its assembly hangar to a testing hangar at its production facility near Phoenix.

The vehicle will be completed and rolled out by the company’s next earnings call in August, after which it will be transported by Virgin’s Eve carrier aircraft to Spaceport America in New Mexico for flight tests.

“We remain on track to commence flight testing in Q3 and space flight in Q4,” Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said on the call, reiterating a schedule the company provided in its previous earnings call March 30.

The confidence in that schedule, he said, has allowed the company to inform its current base of 650 customers approximately when each of them will fly. Those flights will take place in 2027 and into the first half of 2028.

Doug Ahrens, chief financial officer of Virgin Galactic, said the company expects to fly four times a month in January 2027, ramping up to eight flights a month in the second quarter. The first SpaceShip will be joined by a second, currently being fabricated and scheduled for delivery at the end of this year or early next year.

In the March call, Virgin Galactic announced it would sell 50 tickets at $750,000 each as an initial step to restarting commercial sales. In this call, the company did not disclose how many tickets had been sold but said there was strong interest.

“The response has been strong and global in nature, and we’ve received qualified inquiries from customers across more than 20 countries,” Colglazier said. That interest, he noted, came from individuals, research organizations and government agencies.

“We secured deposits for a meaningful portion of the available seats at this price point, and I expect we will close this limited tranche of spaceflight expeditions at the $750,000 price during our glide flight program in Q3,” he said. Virgin will then pause ticket sales to “begin onboarding” the new customers, later reopening sales, likely at a higher price.

As the company gears up for commercial flights at a higher cadence than when it was flying its Unity vehicle, it is also preparing to increase production of the hybrid rocket motors that power SpaceShip. Colglazier said Virgin has started work on a motor assembly line at its Phoenix facility that should be complete in the fourth quarter. That will allow employees who have been working on assembling vehicles to shift to motor production “without missing a beat.”

Virgin Galactic recorded a net loss of $65 million in the first quarter and had negative free cash flow of $93 million. The company ended the quarter with $251 million in cash and equivalents on hand.

Executives said that is sufficient to keep the company operating through the beginning of commercial service, particularly since expenses will decline as the first vehicles are completed. The company raised $52 million in April through an at-the-market sale of stock, with the ability to sell $87 million more through the same mechanism.

“Spending continues to decline quarter by quarter, debt retirements are being made on or ahead of schedule and cash balances are being maintained at appropriate levels as we work through the final quarters of our pre-revenue phase,” Colglazier said.

3–4 minutes

WASHINGTON — Navigation is emerging as a growing challenge for spacecraft operating beyond Earth orbit, where GPS coverage weakens. Northrop Grumman is adapting technologies developed for the James Webb Space Telescope into a smaller navigation system aimed at mid-size satellites.

The defense contractor said it developed a spacecraft navigation system called LR-450 that allows a vehicle to calculate its position, movement and orientation without relying on external signals such as GPS.

Northrop describes the LR-450 as a smaller, lower-power commercial derivative of the navigation architecture used in NASA’s Webb telescope, which has operated near the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point since early 2022.

GPS signals were designed primarily for terrestrial and near-Earth use. Although they extend beyond low Earth orbit, the signals weaken significantly deeper into space, creating challenges for lunar missions, military spacecraft and deep-space probes.

“The LR-450 was developed primarily as a commercial-grade inertial measurement unit designed to support precise guidance and control of spacecraft,” Larry Hershman, manager of space programs at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement to SpaceNews.

He said the system could also support applications intended to complement or back up traditional positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT, systems.

At the center of the LR-450 is a miniature hemispherical resonating gyroscope, or mHRG, a sensor that measures rotation and orientation with high precision. Variants of the technology have historically been used in strategic missiles, submarines and high-end spacecraft where stability and reliability are critical.

Northrop said it reduced the size, weight and power requirements enough to package the technology into a smaller modular unit suitable for satellites operating from Earth orbit to deep space. According to the company, the LR-450 weighs less than 10 pounds and consumes less than 15 watts of power.

Hershman said the unit is designed as a modular sensor system that customers can integrate into different spacecraft platforms without requiring redesigns.

While the LR-450 was not specifically developed for alternative PNT constellations, Hershman said it could support complementary navigation architectures intended to reduce dependence on GPS.

The LR-450 name follows Northrop’s internal designation system for guidance products and references the company’s 400-series family of gyro sensors built around milli-Hemispherical Resonating Gyroscope technology.

5–7 minutes

TAMPA, Fla. — SES has canceled two satellites Intelsat ordered before being acquired by the Luxembourg-based multi-orbit operator, joining France’s Eutelsat in pulling back from geostationary orbit expansion plans drawn up just a few years ago.

The company canceled the IS-41 and IS-44 satellites ordered from Thales Alenia Space as part of Intelsat’s post-bankruptcy growth plan in 2022, the same year Eutelsat tasked the European manufacturer to build Flexsat Americas, before recently scrapping the program to curb GEO spending.

While SES did not name the two satellites it said during a May 12 earnings call were canceled as part of post-merger fleet rationalization efforts, they are now missing from the company’s list of upcoming launches.

“SES has notified the termination of the Intelsat-41/Intelsat-44 contract,” Thales Alenia Space spokesperson Tarik Lahlou said later via email.

“The two companies continue to maintain close cooperation on current contracts, such as ASTRA 1Q and SES-26 geostationary satellites, and future projects. Thales Alenia Space will not be making any further comments.”

The software-defined IS-41 and IS-44 satellites were until recently slated to launch in 2027, two years later than originally planned, to provide broadband across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Eutelsat’s Flexsat Americas was also to be based on Thales Alenia Space’s Inspire platform, enabling it to be reconfigured once in orbit in response to changing mission needs. Once set to launch in 2026, Flexsat was targeting deployment in 2028 before the cancellation.

Thales Alenia Space declined to comment on the cancellation of Flexsat Americas.

Fleet rationalization

SES completed its acquisition of Intelsat in July 2025, creating a massive multi-orbit giant spanning more than 100 GEO and medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites.

Intelsat also has a partnership with the OneWeb low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband satellites Eutelsat operates alongside its GEO business.

“Following the Intelsat acquisition, SES is optimizing across a larger, more resilient satellite fleet and reducing unnecessary duplication,” an SES spokesperson said in response to SpaceNews questions.

“As part of this normalization, SES is canceling two software‑defined satellite orders while retaining ample flexibility through four others and leveraging existing fleet capacity to ensure seamless, uninterrupted service for customers.”

During the earnings call, SES chief financial officer Lisa Pataki said the cancellations followed a review that included where it makes sense to extend the life of existing satellites with in-orbit services.

SES outlined five upcoming GEO life-extension missions in November, scheduled between 2026 and 2029, using servicers from Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics subsidiary, Starfish Space and Infinite Orbits.

The operator still has IS-42 and IS-43 on its manifest, two software-defined satellites Intelsat ordered from Airbus in 2020 as part of the same plan for a 5G-compatible network that can be reconfigured in orbit. Originally slated to launch in 2023, they are now listed for 2027 alongside IS-45, a small GEO spacecraft Intelsat ordered from Swissto12 in 2022 that was initially scheduled for deployment in 2025.

Source: SES earnings presentation May 12, 2026.

SES reported 847 million euros ($992 million) in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, up 80.5% compared with the same period last year when adjusted for foreign currency variations, following the Intelsat acquisition.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) soared 57% to 404 million euros.

The growth was driven by aviation and government connectivity services, even as traditional GEO-heavy parts of the business faced headwinds in fixed data and video distribution.

SES said it is also progressing with the upgrade of its O3b MEO broadband fleet, with three more mPower satellites due this year and a next-generation network planned by 2030.

Similar pressures at Eutelsat

Eutelsat, which combined its GEO fleet with OneWeb’s LEO broadband network in 2023, reported a similar split May 12 between weakening legacy markets and growth from non-geostationary government and aviation services.

Like-for-like GEO revenues fell 4.3% for the three months to the end of March to 93.5 million euros, while LEO connectivity sales jumped 65% to 62.2 million euros.

Total revenues increased 3.1% to 293 million euros for the quarter.

In February, the French operator said canceling Flexsat Americas would save more than 100 million euros, amid “increased vigilance on GEO spend” while focusing capital expenditure on LEO.

Intelsat had an agreement to use Flexsat Americas as part of its multi-orbit capacity deal with Eutelsat.

More than 440 LEO satellites have been ordered from Airbus to replenish the OneWeb constellation in the coming years. Eutelsat is also preparing to contribute LEO spacecraft to IRIS², Europe’s sovereign connectivity program targeting services around 2030.

The company also plans to lease half the Ku-band capacity on what it calls Flexsat Asia, a satellite Thailand’s Thaicom ordered from Airbus in 2023 for launch in 2027.

4–6 minutes

WASHINGTON — Transcelestial has advanced its work to provide space-to-ground optical communications with a test of laser transmissions from a satellite to ground stations.

The Singapore-based company announced May 12 it performed a test where ground stations in Singapore and Spain were able to detect and track laser transmissions from a satellite built by Open Cosmos and launched last year.

The test is a final step before attempting to transmit data from the satellite to those optical ground stations, said Rohit Jha, co-founder and chief executive of Transcelestial, in an interview.

“This is one of the hard parts of putting laser comms into space: how do you quickly acquire both sides,” he said. That is a challenge because of factors like clouds that can interrupt laser transmissions as well as light pollution in urban areas that can make it hard to identify the laser transmission from the satellite.

Jha said his company uses techniques like optical filters on the ground stations’ telescopes to limit light to the frequencies the lasers are transmitting at, as well as unique blinking patterns to distinguish the laser from other sources in the sky.

“Once it’s locked on both sides, are able to use closed-loop tracking to actually track the whole thing across the sky,” he said, with computer vision algorithms that identify the laser and keep it locked in place.

With the ability to identify and track the laser transmissions now demonstrated, he said the company will move into its next phase, testing the system to show it can transmit data to the ground at high rates. Transcelestial is also working to set up new optical ground stations near Austin, Texas, and in Australia.

Transcelestial started with developing terrestrial optical communications systems but is now moving into space-based systems. It has been selling terminals to several satellite manufacturers that can be used for intersatellite links, the most common application of optical communications in space, but also for space-to-ground links. Transcelestial is also planning a data-relay satellite constellation using optical communications.

The company announced May 6 an agreement with Antaris to demonstrate how optical communications could be used for an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance constellation Antaris is developing. That includes testing optical communications on the Janus-2 technology demonstration satellite Antaris plans to launch in the fourth quarter.

Jha said Transcelestial has signed up five satellite developers in as many months for its terminals, such as Australian company Gilmour Space. The demand for optical communications terminals for satellites is outstripping supply, he said, with concerns about future availability with the acquisition of Skyloom by IonQ and Mynaric by Rocket Lab.

“I think that creates an opportunity for us because our terminals are one-fourth the size of these other terminals” and also cost less, he said.

That creates a customer base for space-to-ground optical communications, he added, noting there was an uptick in interest in the technology during the Artemis 2 mission. On the flight, NASA successfully tested optical communications to return imagery and video from the Orion spacecraft at much higher data rates than traditional radio-frequency links using the Deep Space Network.

That interest was in evidence, he said, at a recent event he attended where government officials expressed strong interest in optical communications. “If you don’t have laser comm capabilities, whether intersatellite or space-to-ground, in your bus, then you’re far behind everyone else, because every customer with the government or telcos is looking at it and asking for it,” he said.