Commercial
Commercial spaceflight news from Cosmic Herald — SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, private space stations, and the new space economy.
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Commercial
Satellites are replaced when they run out of fuel. A nascent industry wants to refuel and repair them instead.
In-space servicing — refueling, repairing, and repositioning satellites — could extend the operational life of billion-dollar space assets by decades. Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicles have already done it commercially. The next generation aims to do it at scale.
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Commercial
The company quietly building the ISS's replacement, one pressurized module at a time
Axiom Space has flown four private astronaut missions to the ISS, is designing the spacesuits for Artemis moon walks, and is under contract to attach its own commercial module to the station before 2030. When the ISS is decommissioned, Axiom's section will detach and operate independently.
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Commercial
The satellites won. Now astronomers are learning to live with 40,000 of them.
Starlink, OneWeb, and their competitors have fundamentally changed the night sky. The question is no longer whether to stop the constellations — it's whether engineering fixes and international regulation can preserve professional astronomy before Vera Rubin comes online.
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Commercial
With the ISS nearing retirement, the race to build its replacement is on
The International Space Station is slated to retire around 2030, and NASA is betting that private companies will build what comes next. A wave of record funding in 2026 is fueling a contest among several rival stations to be first.
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Commercial
The new Moon rush: a fleet of private landers is heading for the lunar surface
NASA stopped building its own small Moon landers and started buying rides instead. The result is a wave of commercial spacecraft from Intuitive Machines, Firefly, and others aiming for the lunar surface in 2026 — a bumpy, fast-moving experiment in outsourcing exploration.
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Commercial
America's new national-security rocket is grounded by a recurring booster glitch
ULA's Vulcan Centaur was certified to launch the Pentagon's most sensitive satellites — and then a solid rocket booster misbehaved on two flights in a row. The Space Force has now paused Vulcan missions until the problem is understood.
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Commercial
A single Falcon 9 booster has now flown 35 times — and made the impossible look boring
On June 8, SpaceX launched the same first-stage booster for the 35th time. The milestone is a reminder of how completely rocket reuse — once dismissed as a fantasy — has rewritten the economics of getting to orbit.
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Commercial
Rocket Lab's bid to challenge the Falcon 9 is down to a few months — and a few tests
Neutron, Rocket Lab's medium-lift, partially reusable rocket, is targeting its first flight in the last quarter of 2026. A tank failure earlier this year forced a redesign — but a fresh multi-launch deal shows customers are already betting on it.
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Commercial
The first privately owned space station is almost ready — and the clock behind it is the ISS
Vast's Haven-1 is on track to become the first commercial space station in orbit, a single module flying on a Falcon 9. It's a modest first step with an outsized purpose: proving private outposts can exist before the International Space Station comes down in 2030.
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Commercial
New Glenn blew up on the pad. Now NASA is decoupling its Moon plans from Blue Origin's rocket.
A static-fire explosion on 28 May wrecked Blue Origin's launch pad and put its New Glenn rocket on the sidelines. With a Blue Moon lunar lander waiting on that rocket, NASA is quietly rearranging the dependencies in its Artemis architecture.
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Commercial
Starship's V3 debut: a working ship, a wrecked booster, and a grounded fleet
Flight 12 introduced the larger Starship V3 and got further than the headlines suggest — the ship flew its mission. But the booster crashed, the FAA has ordered a mishap investigation, and the capability Artemis is waiting for still hasn't been shown.
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Commercial
A New Glenn explosion rattles Blue Origin — and NASA's Moon plans
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket detonated during a test on May 28, gutting its launch pad. The company vows to fly again this year; NASA warns the pad itself may not recover until 2028 — with consequences for Artemis.
