Space · Wednesday, 14 October 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Arms and space firms move closer: Czech arms group CSG buys 9.5% of MDA Space, and Italy's Avio will build rocket motors for Lockheed Martin's missiles

Two deals on Tuesday tied weapons makers to space companies, the US Army tested Amazon's satellite internet, and the EU weighed paying for space from the same fund as defence. Perseverance became the longest-driving rover on any other world.

9.5%

of MDA Space, the maker of the space station's robot arm, now owned by Czech arms group CSG

the deal marks CSG's entry into the space industry [2]

$500m+

that Avio says it is spending on new rocket-motor factories in the US

it wants to sell motors to many defence customers, not one [1]

The lead story — what happened

CSG, a Czech defence company, has bought 9.5% of MDA Space, a Canadian space company. [2]
MDA is best known for building Canadarm and Canadarm2, two robot arms made for NASA. [2]
CSG announced the deal on 13 October as its entry into the space industry, and says it plans to grow there. [2]
On the same day Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest US weapons makers, signed a deal with Avio, an Italian rocket company. [1]
Avio's US branch will make solid rocket motors, tubes of packed fuel that push a missile, for two US Army weapons: a long-range guided rocket and the Precision Strike Missile. [1]
Avio's chief executive, Giulio Ranzo, said Avio is spending more than $500 million on new motor factories in the US, to sell to many defence buyers. [1]
Lockheed said the deal will help it make missiles faster, but it gave no date, and Avio's motors must pass tests before production starts. [1]
Avio's Italian parent already makes motors for European missiles such as Aster, and Avio recently announced a cooperation deal with RTX, another US weapons maker. [1]
MDA's Canadarm2 still works on the space station: the cargo ship launched on Tuesday carries a case to bring home a joint from the arm that failed and was replaced in June. [26][9]

CSG's new stake9.5%
Other owners90.5%

CSG now owns a little under a tenth of MDA Space. The rest stays with MDA's other shareholders.

Who is involved

CSG

a Czech company that makes weapons and military vehicles; it bought 9.5% of MDA Space
MDA Space

a Canadian space company that built Canadarm and Canadarm2, the robot arms of the shuttle and the space station
Avio

an Italian company that builds Europe's small Vega rockets and missile motors; it will make motors for Lockheed
Lockheed Martin

one of the largest US weapons makers; it builds the two Army missiles the motors are for

How it unfolded

30 June astronauts remove a failed joint from Canadarm2 on a spacewalk [26]
13 Oct CSG announces its 9.5% stake in MDA Space [2]
13 Oct Lockheed and Avio sign their motor deal at the US Army's yearly convention in Washington [1]
Next Avio's US motors must pass qualification tests before they are made in numbers [1]

Where this points

Watch whether CSG raises its stake in MDA above 9.5%, and whether Avio names a date for its first motors made in the US. [1][2]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Armies buying from space firms Building↑

Amazon showed the US Army its satellite internet at Aberdeen in Maryland, with downloads above 400 megabits a second. [4] The US Space Force set up a new unit to give special forces satellite links, navigation and intelligence. [5] CSG, a Czech arms maker, bought into MDA Space, which built the station's robot arm. [2]

Too few rockets to go round High↑

SpaceX is reported to have almost no Falcon 9 rides left to sell before the rocket retires in 2028 or 2029. [15] A coming shortage of launches is helping drive record investment in space companies, SpaceNews reports. [16] Sateliot, a Spanish satellite company, still has to fly on SpaceX until a Spanish rocket is ready in late 2027. [6]

European money crossing the Atlantic Building↑

CSG, a Czech arms maker, bought 9.5% of MDA Space in Canada. [2] Avio, an Italian rocket maker, is spending over $500 million on motor factories in the US. [1] Sateliot, a Spanish satellite company, will keep launching on SpaceX rockets until late 2027. [6]

Old machines still at work Steady→

Perseverance was built to drive about 20 km on Mars and has now driven 45 km. [10] The ageing space station is getting its last two new solar wings, to add to its power. [26] Juno has circled Jupiter since 2016 and is still finding new things about its magnetic field. [19]

The rest of the day

16 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Amazon shows the US Army its satellite internet

Amazon Leo, Amazon's network of internet satellites, showed its service to the US Army at Aberdeen in Maryland, SpaceNews reports. [4] Downloads peaked above 400 megabits a second. [4] Amazon has now built 1,000 of its satellites, and is entering a market that SpaceX's Starlink has led for five years. [27] Airlines, shipping companies and governments are all watching its arrival closely, Ars Technica reports. [27]

Why it matters — It is a step into selling to armed forces, a market where Amazon must compete with SpaceX's Starlink. [4] It was a demonstration, and the part of the report we could read names no order.
03
US Space Force sets up a unit for special forces

The US Space Force has set up a new unit that works for US Special Operations Command, the part of the US military that runs its elite forces, SpaceNews reports. [5] The unit makes formal the Space Force's job of giving those forces satellite links, navigation and intelligence. [5] A photo with the report shows a US Air Force gunship practising in 2024 while its GPS, the satellite navigation system, was being jammed. [5]

Why it matters — Special forces depend on satellite links and navigation that an enemy can jam, which is what that exercise practised. [5] The part of the report we could read gives no size or budget for the unit.
04
EU weighs one fund for defence and space

The European Union's space programme, 14.8 billion euros for 2021 to 2027, ends next year with the EU's seven-year budget. [6] It pays for Galileo, Europe's satellite navigation, and Copernicus, its Earth-watching satellites. [6] The European Commission wants space paid for from 2028 by one new fund with 131 billion euros for defence and space together. [6] EU leaders discuss the next budget on Thursday and Friday. [6] In May the Commission also proposed one EU-wide licence for satellites that talk to phones, keeping part of the radio band for European firms. [6]

Space programme 2021-2714.8 bn euros
Proposed fund for defence and space, 2028-34131 bn euros
The new fund is far larger, but it is shared with defence, and no split between the two has been set.

Why it matters — In one shared pot, satellite projects would compete with defence for the same money. [6] The radio band matters because the current rights run out in May 2027. [6]
05
Cargo ship with the station's last new solar wings launches

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the CRS-35 cargo ship from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 10:33 UTC on Tuesday. [7] Its booster, flying for the eighth time, landed back beside the pad. [9] The Dragon capsule carries about 2,860 kg of supplies and the last two of the space station's new roll-out solar wings, each able to make over 20 kilowatts for more than ten years. [8][7] It should reach the station on Thursday at about 15:00 UTC and stay about a month. [8][7]

Why it matters — The new wings will add power to the ageing station, and astronauts will fit them on later spacewalks. [26][9] At dawn the rocket's lit exhaust spread into a glowing 'jellyfish' that people saw from Georgia to North Carolina. [8]
06
Perseverance becomes the longest-driving rover

NASA's Perseverance rover passed 45.22 km of driving on Mars on 11 October, its 2,006th day there. [10][13] That beat the 45.16 km of Opportunity, an older NASA rover that took 14 years to cover it. [10] Perseverance, a car-sized rover, has been on Mars for five and a half years. [11] It was designed to drive about 20 km, and its team says it could reach 100 km. [10] It was expected to pass the record in August, but stopped for two months to study pale rocks that may be among the oldest ever examined on Mars. [14]

Designed to drive20 km
Opportunity's old record45.16 km
Perseverance now45.22 km
Team's hope100 km
Perseverance has already driven more than twice what it was built for. The 100 km is the team's hope, not a plan.

Why it matters — Its team now wants to drive south along the rim of Jezero, a crater that once held a lake, to study the many kinds of rock there. [10][13] Its science instruments are still nearly all working, its deputy project scientist said. [10]
07
Varda plans three landings by Christmas

Varda Space Industries, a US company whose small capsules make medicines in orbit and bring them back, has two craft in orbit and a third due to launch this month. [15] All three should land at the Koonibba test range in South Australia before Christmas. [15] Varda plans seven more flights in 2027, and will hire 100 more people by then on top of its 286. [15] It says it has launches booked until 2029. [15]

Why it matters — Space.com reports an expected rocket shortage from about 2029, as SpaceX moves its work from Falcon 9 to Starship. [15] SpaceNews reports that a coming launch shortage is helping drive record investment in space companies. [16]
08
A camera in orbit photographs a new satellite

Satellogic, a company that photographs the Earth from small satellites, and HEO, an Australian company that takes pictures of objects in space, released images of Satellogic's new Merlin.01 satellite on 13 October. [17] The pictures were taken in orbit a few days after Merlin.01 launched, by a camera on another Satellogic satellite. [17]

Why it matters — HEO's business is pictures of things in space rather than of the ground. [17] Here a company used a camera it already had in orbit to look at its own newest satellite. [17]
09
A radio telescope maps old hydrogen on its own

CHIME, a radio telescope in Canada built to study dark energy, has picked up the faint radio glow of hydrogen gas from when the universe was 5 billion years old. [18] Dark energy is the unknown push that is making the universe grow faster. [18] Until now CHIME could only find this glow by matching its maps with expensive galaxy surveys from other telescopes. [18] The team used just 94 nights of data from 2019, and has seven years of data still to search. [18]

Why it matters — Mapping where hydrogen sits shows how matter is spread across space, which is one way to measure the push of dark energy. [18] Galaxy surveys only reach parts of space crowded enough to form stars, so CHIME's own maps can cover more, faster and for less money. [18]
10
Jupiter's magnetic disc ripples like a sheet

Jupiter is wrapped in a flat disc of charged gas held by its magnetic field, fed by volcanoes on its moon Io. [19] Scientists pictured it as a smooth disc that tilts up and down as Jupiter spins every 9.9 hours. [19] A team led by Shandong University in China studied readings from NASA's Juno probe and found the disc crumples into waves during active spells. [19] Juno crossed the disc again and again, instead of twice per turn. [19]

Why it matters — The ripples come from many small spots where magnetic field lines snap and rejoin, across about 100 degrees of the planet. [19] They may change how Io's volcanic material is carried around Jupiter. [19]
11
Planet systems come in two families

Astronomers now know more than 1,000 stars with several planets each. [20] A team writing in Nature Astronomy compared their total planet mass and found two separate groups. [20] Light systems, mostly around stars the size of the Sun or smaller, have tightly packed planets of similar size on calm orbits, much like our own. [20] Heavy systems, around Sun-like and bigger stars rich in heavy elements, have orbits ten times more stirred up. [20]

Why it matters — Stirred-up orbits point to violent pasts, where planets threw each other around. [20] It suggests the star a system forms around helps decide which kind of family it becomes. [20]
12
A torn-apart galaxy's past read from its stars

The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is a small galaxy being pulled apart by the Milky Way, leaving long streams of stars. [21] A team writing in Nature Astronomy ran computer models of how those streams formed. [21] The models match the heavy elements in the streams only if the dwarf galaxy once had a disc with an unusual pattern of those elements. [21] The same pattern turns up in just 3 of 217 other small galaxies surveyed. [21]

Why it matters — Stars in a stream keep a record of the galaxy they came from, so the shape of a galaxy that is being torn apart can be rebuilt. [21] The Milky Way has a similar pattern, which raises the question of whether the two grew up together. [21]
13
Hera is a month from the asteroids DART hit

Hera, a European Space Agency probe launched in October 2024, reaches the asteroid pair Didymos and Dimorphos next month. [22] In 2022 NASA's DART spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos, the 151-metre moonlet, on purpose. [22] The hit shortened its 11-hour-55-minute orbit around Didymos by about 32 minutes. [22] Hera will look at the crater and release two small satellites, Juventas and Milani, and Juventas may land on Dimorphos. [22]

Why it matters — DART tested whether hitting an asteroid can change its path, and it did. [22] Knowing exactly what the crash did could help if people ever need to move an asteroid heading for Earth. [22]
14
A gold-wire sensor tells life's molecules apart

Life on Earth uses amino acids of one 'handedness', while chemistry without life makes left and right forms in equal amounts. [24] A team at Osaka University in Japan built a sensor from two gold wires less than a nanometre apart. [24] When an amino acid passes between them, the electric current changes, and software named the handedness of one amino acid correctly about 87.6% of the time. [24] It was tested on soil from Chile's Atacama desert and on the Murchison meteorite. [24]

Why it matters — Finding much more of one hand than the other on another world would hint at life, and today's test machines are heavy to fly. [24] Dirt in real samples still fouled the tiny gap, so it is not yet as accurate as lab equipment. [24]
15
French astronaut says Mars must wait

Sophie Adenot, a French astronaut of the European Space Agency, spoke in Cologne on Tuesday after eight months on the space station. [25] She said a crewed trip to Mars with today's technology would be a disaster. [25] About half of astronauts feel weak and sick on returning, she said, and a Mars ship would have less room to exercise than the station. [25] She said travel must get much faster, or craft must spin to make their own gravity. [25]

Why it matters — Her stay was about as long as a trip to Mars would take with today's rockets. [25] Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, has talked for years of sending people to Mars, and she said it is too early. [25]
16
US election could reshape space committees

Velos, a US firm, has published a tracker of how the US elections on 3 November could change who oversees space in the US Congress. [23] The House committee for space science loses three members who are retiring. [23] Close races include the districts holding SpaceX's Starbase in Texas and NASA's Wallops launch site in Virginia. [23] Velos predicts the Democrats will win back the House, and calls the US Senate too close to call. [23]

Why it matters — These committees write the rules and set the money for NASA and for military space each year. [23] Who leads each one also depends on which party wins each house of the US Congress. [23]
17
A start-up wants to fire cargo to space from a gun

Longshot Space Technology, a start-up in Alameda, California, is building giant gas guns to throw payloads towards space, TechCrunch reports. [28] Tanks along a steel barrel fire one after another to push a projectile faster, and its 70-foot test gun has reached four times the speed of sound. [28] It has raised about $20 million and plans guns of 140 and 328 feet next. [28] The US military has given it several contracts to test very fast flight with its guns. [28]

Why it matters — Reaching orbit this way would need a gun about 10 km long, and the company says finding a place to build one is the hard part. [28] Its hoped-for price of $50 per kilogram is the company's own goal, not something it has shown. [28]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why a newcomer buys a share of a space company instead of starting one

Building a space business takes years of flights and trusted customers, so a company arriving with money often buys part of one that has them.

The twist

Money cannot buy ten years of flying. It can buy part of a company that has already flown them.

How it works

A space company's value sits in hardware that has flown and customers who trust it
Both take years to build, and money cannot make the years shorter
A newcomer with money can start from nothing and wait those years
Or it can buy part of a company that already has them
The seller gets cash, and the buyer gets a way in and a say

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

CSG's stake in MDA Space

An arms maker with no space business bought 9.5% of the company that built the station's robot arm, instead of building an arm-maker of its own.
Lockheed's deal with Avio

Lockheed needed more missile motors fast, so it signed up a company whose Italian parent has long made them.
Amazon's test for the US Army

The Army tried out a company's satellite network that already flies, instead of waiting years to launch one of its own.

Where you've seen this

Big drug companies

they often buy a small firm with a drug already in trials rather than start the research themselves

Football clubs

a club in a hurry signs an experienced player instead of waiting for a youngster to grow

Countries buying fighter jets

most buy a proven plane from abroad because designing one takes decades

The catch

A share is not control. At 9.5% the buyer gets a seat and a view, but the engineers who built the record can still leave or say no.

And the whole of it

The arm on the space station, the motors in Army missiles and an internet network in orbit each now have new owners or customers. Each of them sees the part it paid for, and the astronauts and soldiers who use these machines see a different part.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Weapons and space companies drew closer on Tuesday. CSG, a Czech arms group, bought 9.5% of MDA Space, and Avio, an Italian rocket maker, agreed to build motors for Lockheed Martin's Army missiles. [2][1] On the same day Amazon showed the US Army its satellite internet, and the US Space Force set up a unit to serve special forces. [4][5]

Who gains

Avio — It wins Lockheed as a buyer for the US motor factories it is spending over $500 million to build. [1]
CSG — A 9.5% stake gives it a first foothold in space, in the company that built the Canadarm robot arms for NASA. [2]
Amazon Leo — The Army test lets it show its network to military buyers, a market SpaceX's Starlink has led. [4][27]
PLD Space, a Spanish rocket start-up — Sateliot plans to move its late-2027 launch from SpaceX to PLD's Miura 5 before that rocket has flown. [6]
Varda Space Industries — It booked launches through 2029, so it is covered while others look for room on rockets. [15]

Who pays

Satellite companies without launches booked — A coming shortage of rockets means delays, and SpaceNews reports firms are raising money to ride them out. [16][15]
The EU's space programmes, such as Galileo and Copernicus — Under the Commission's plan they lose their own budget line and would compete with defence inside one fund. [6]
European small-satellite companies — Until a European rocket flies, Sateliot and others must keep paying SpaceX, a US company, for rides. [6]
Astronauts on long missions — About half come home weak and sick, Sophie Adenot said, and a Mars ship would give them less room to exercise than the station. [25]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

What CSG paid for its 9.5% of MDA Space, and whether it will buy more.

The part of the reports we could read gives no price, and says only that CSG plans to grow its place in space. [2]
02

When Avio's US-made motors will be ready.

Lockheed gave no timeline, and the motors must pass qualification tests first. [1]
03

Whether the Army test leads to an order for Amazon Leo.

SpaceNews reported a demonstration at Aberdeen, and the part we could read names no contract. [4]
04

What the Space Force's new special forces unit will do day to day, and how big it is.

Only the opening of the SpaceNews report was readable to us, and it gives the unit's purpose but no size or budget. [5]
05

How much of the EU's proposed 131 billion euro fund would go to space rather than defence.

The Commission set one figure for both, and EU leaders only begin discussing the budget on Thursday. [6]
06

Whether PLD Space's Miura 5 will be ready for Sateliot's satellites in late 2027.

The rocket has never flown, and PLD plans its first launch by the end of this year. [6]
07

How much rocket room satellite firms will find after Falcon 9 retires.

Space.com cites media reports that SpaceX has almost no Falcon 9 rides left, while newer rockets such as New Glenn and Terran R are young or unflown. [15]
08

Whether CHIME's hydrogen maps can measure dark energy as well as galaxy surveys do.

The first result used 94 nights of 2019 data, and seven years of data are still to be searched. [18]

04 Hope carry this

NASA's Perseverance rover has now driven 45.22 km on Mars, farther than any machine on another world. It was built for about 20 km, and nearly all its science instruments still work.

Also true today

The last two new solar wings for the International Space Station launched safely on Tuesday. Each can make more than 20 kilowatts for over ten years.
A sensor made of two gold wires, less than a nanometre apart, told the left- and right-handed forms of an amino acid apart about 87.6% of the time. It was also tested on a meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969.
CHIME, a Canadian radio telescope, can now map ancient hydrogen on its own, without costly help from other telescopes.