This Week In SpaceTech | Edition of week 22, 2025

Welcome to This Week In SpaceTech, your concise global round-up of the biggest moves in space hardware, finance and policy from 26 May to 1 June 2025.

🚀 Launches & Missions

• Starship Flight 9 reached space (27 May) before a propellant-pressure leak killed control; it still marked the first re-flight of a Super Heavy booster and Starship’s highest-altitude test yet.

• China’s Tianwen-2 lifted off (28 May) on a Long March 3B, kicking off the country’s first asteroid-sample mission and a future comet rendezvous.

• GPS III-7 satellite launched on Falcon 9 (30 May) for the U.S. Space Force, expanding the modernized navigation constellation and logging another clean booster recovery.

• Starlink 11-18 (31 May) flew 27 second-generation satellites from Vandenberg; veteran booster B1071 completed its record-setting 25th orbital flight and landing.

  
  

💰 Money & Deals

• Northrop Grumman poured $50 million into Firefly Aerospace (29 May) to accelerate their jointly built medium-lift Eclipse rocket, slated to debut in 2026.

• Rocket Lab moved up the value chain (27 May), signing a $275 million deal to buy EO/IR-sensor maker Geost, giving the launch firm in-house payload capability for national-security satellites.

  
  

🏛️ Policy & Leadership

• White House yanked Jared Isaacman’s NASA-administrator nomination (31 May) amid a Trump–Musk rift, leaving the agency leaderless on the eve of key budget fights.

• Full FY 2026 budget landed on Capitol Hill (30 May), proposing a $6 billion (≈24 %) cut to NASA that would slash science spending and cancel Gateway, SLS and Orion after Artemis III, instantly galvanizing congressional push-back.

  
  

Keep following for the next burst of launches, funding rounds and political twists that keep the space sector in constant motion.