OUTERSPACE TODAYNEWS
← All editionsTuesday, July 14, 2026 / Issue 032
[ OST Daily ]

L3Harris and Sierra Space Land $1.75B for Golden Dome Tracking Layer, FAA Clears Starship Flight 13, Voyager Closes Astrobotic With $298M NASA Add-On

Outerspace Today6 min read / 2026-07-14
OST Daily July 14, 2026 — the Space Development Agency hands L3Harris $955 million and Sierra Space $798 million to build 36 Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 tracking satellites for the Golden Dome architecture, the FAA clears SpaceX to fly Starship again ahead of a July 16 window carrying 20 working Starlink V3 satellites, and Voyager Technologies closes its Astrobotic buyout alongside a $298 million NASA lunar lander task order
The daily pictureOST editorial illustration · 2026-07-14
[ 01 ]

The briefing

The Space Development Agency handed L3Harris and Sierra Space $1.75 billion of fixed-price Other Transaction Authority contracts on Monday to build 36 Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 satellites for the Golden Dome architecture. L3Harris takes $955 million for 18 HBTSS-like fire-control variants across two orbital planes, Sierra Space $798 million for 18 missile warning and tracking variants, all targeted for launch by late 2028. That accelerates a program paced by Northrop Grumman's HBTSS prototype work and pulls a second prime, Sierra Space, into the Tracking Layer alongside December's Tranche 3 award to L3Harris, Northrop, Lockheed Martin and Rocket Lab.

The FAA cleared SpaceX to return Starship to flight after tracing the May Super Heavy failure to heat effects on propulsion components and an erroneous engine-alarm configuration, and SpaceX now targets a Thursday, July 16 window at Starbase. Flight 13 will be the second V3 launch and the first as a public company, carrying 20 functioning Starlink V3 satellites and testing inter-generational laser links in orbit. That real-payload step matters for the constellation's build-rate: each fully loaded Starship can add roughly 60 Tbps of network capacity versus 2.6 Tbps on a Falcon 9 V2 flight.

Voyager Technologies closed its Astrobotic acquisition and disclosed that NASA's June 30 Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) award for two Peregrine deliveries is worth roughly $298 million, a contract that landed after the deal was announced and was not in Voyager's June 2 acquisition profile. The company rebranded the unit Voyager Lunar Systems as Griffin-1 shipped to JPL for environmental testing ahead of a launch as soon as Q4.

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The headlines

01

SDA books $1.75B for Golden Dome Tranche 3 tracking satellites

LHX

The Space Development Agency awarded L3Harris $955 million and Sierra Space $798 million in fixed-price OTA rapid-prototyping contracts to deliver 36 Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 satellites by the end of 2028. L3Harris will build 18 HBTSS-like fire-control variants across two orbital planes at its Indiana facility, while Sierra Space delivers 18 missile warning and tracking variants, all interoperable with prior Tranche 1 and 2 vehicles and integrated into a common ground system supporting Golden Dome.

02

FAA clears Starship as SpaceX targets July 16 with 20 real V3 Starlinks

SpaceX

SpaceX won FAA clearance to resume Starship flights after the agency identified heat effects on Super Heavy propulsion components and erroneous engine-alarm settings as the probable causes of the May booster failure. SpaceX modified engine startup, alarm thresholds and relight logic and is targeting Flight 13 as soon as Thursday, July 16 from Starbase. The mission will carry 20 functioning Starlink V3 satellites, test cross-generation laser links, and deploy cameras on six satellites to image Starship's heat shield during reentry.

03

Voyager closes Astrobotic buyout with fresh $298M NASA lunar task order

VOYG

Voyager Technologies closed its acquisition of Astrobotic, paying $162 million in cash and stock with $9 million of assumed debt and up to $129 million in performance earnouts, and renamed the unit Voyager Lunar Systems. The transaction landed alongside a $298 million NASA CLPS task order announced June 30 for two Peregrine deliveries in 2028 to the Gruithuisen Domes, plus Griffin-1's shipment to JPL for environmental testing ahead of a launch targeted as soon as Q4.

04

SpaceX stock slides toward $135 IPO price

SpaceX

SpaceX shares fell for a second-straight day on Monday, approaching the $135 IPO price set when the company debuted on Nasdaq in mid-June and was added to the Nasdaq-100 last week. The slide comes as the company prepares Starship Flight 13, its first Starship launch as a public company, testing investor tolerance for the fly-fail-fix development approach that underpins the vehicle's roadmap.

05

Reflect Orbital cleared by FCC for Eärendil-1 in-orbit mirror demo

The FCC granted Reflect Orbital a license to fly Eärendil-1, a single-satellite demonstration of an 18-meter thin-film reflector designed to redirect sunlight to targeted ground areas. Commissioners dismissed astronomer and environmental objections as outside the FCC's scope for a single spacecraft and declined to weigh in on the company's proposed 50,000-satellite constellation, leaving those larger questions to a later proceeding.

06

Rocket Lab and True Anomaly cleared for Victus Haze on-orbit chase

RKLB

Rocket Lab and True Anomaly will spend the next six months in a Space Force-designed game of rendezvous and proximity operations, taking turns as chaser and target with their respective satellites under the Tactically Responsive Space program. Executives from both companies said the maneuvers are non-scripted, unlike prior demonstrations that used cooperative or dead targets, and are designed to stress-test operational tactics. The Space Force's TacRS program has at least three more Victus demonstrations planned and is requesting $300 million from fiscal 2027 to 2031.

[ 03 / +4 / -39 ]

Market pulse

Archived snapshot from this edition. Prices and moves are not live.

Gainers+4
Decliners-39
Big mover ASTS-18.0%

RKLB: Rocket Lab and True Anomaly will spend the next six months in a Space Force-designed game of rendezvous and proximity operations, taking turns as chaser and target with their.

AssetSnapshotMoveTrend
AMEAMETEK$236.57+1.3%
PHParker Hannifin$963.98+1.2%
TDYTeledyne Technologies$628.19+0.6%
ASTSAST SpaceMobile$54.40-18.0%
RKLBRocket Lab$66.96-12.1%
PLPlanet Labs$22.15-11.0%
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Launch watch

Schedule and countdowns as recorded in the 2026-07-14 edition.

Starship | Flight 13

SpaceX · Starship V3 · Orbital Launch Pad 2 · SpaceX Starbase, TX · Suborbital

Vikram-I | Demo Flight

Skyroot Aerospace · Vikram-I · Satish Dhawan Space Centre First Launch Pad · Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India · LEO

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Filings

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