Starship Enters FAA Review as Unity Flies and Sidus Prices $100M

SpaceX's next Starship flight now runs through the FAA. The agency determined Flight 12 was a mishap after the Super Heavy booster failed to complete its planned post-separation sequence, and SpaceX needs the review and corrective actions accepted before another flight. The regulatory queue matters because Starship is SpaceX's heavy-lift capacity plan for Starlink upgrades, customer payloads, and future launch economics.

The defense-space procurement story pointed to authority and speed. House Armed Services draft language would dissolve the Space Development Agency and Space Rapid Capabilities Office as standalone organizations and move their programs into Space Force portfolio acquisition. Rocket Lab, meanwhile, cleared a System Requirements Review for SDA's Tracking Layer Tranche 3 missile-warning constellation, keeping its spacecraft-prime thesis in focus.

The company tape was sharper at the operating level. Virgin Galactic used VSS Unity for pilot and ground-crew glide training ahead of its new SpaceShip campaign. Sidus priced a $100 million registered direct offering, making cash runway and dilution the immediate investor questions. In Europe, Stellar Alpina raised pre-seed funding for rotating detonation engines while SmallSat Europe speakers kept the launch-capacity problem in view. NASA's FireSense work rounded out the issue with a field-hardware use case for thermal sensing.