Voyager wins Sandia contract to fly Big Boy demo to the Space Station in 2027

[ 01 ]

The briefing

The initial conversion price of roughly $79.57 per Class A share represents a 20% premium to the July 15 close, giving AST a low-coupon, long-dated financing tied to a stock that traded off 4.6% on the delayed tape. The deal locks in capital as the company scales its BlueBird constellation, and it lands alongside a rare SpaceX operational stumble: a Falcon 9 carrying 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites aborted at engine ignition on Monday from Vandenberg, with a new attempt targeted for the following morning.

MDA Space UK received a Pre-Authorisation to Proceed from OHB System AG to supply two flight units of its LEIA LiDAR for the European Space Agency's Argonaut lunar lander, Europe's first independent cargo delivery to the Moon under a Thales Alenia Space-led industrial team. Voyager Technologies added a mission management contract with Sandia National Laboratories to fly the Big Boy demonstration aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2027 via its Bishop Airlock NEL platform. Both awards sharpen the commercial pipeline into government science budgets that keep expanding.

Government demand for launch is climbing faster than the contracts written last year assumed. The Space Force tripled the ceiling on its National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 vehicle from $5.6 billion to $17 billion, expanding the pool available to SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Relativity and Impulse. Combined Lane 1 and Lane 2 ceilings now exceed $30 billion, driven by the Space Data Network, Airborne Moving Target Indicator constellations and Golden Dome.

[ 02 / 6 items ]

The headlines

Voyager wins Sandia mission management contract for 2027 ISS demo

VOYG

Voyager Technologies was awarded a mission management contract with Sandia National Laboratories to fly the Big Boy demonstration aboard the International Space Station in 2027. The payload will integrate with Voyager's NEL external platform mounted on the company's Bishop Airlock, the only permanent commercially owned ISS module. The first NEL flies to the station aboard JAXA's HTV-X2, with a second platform following in spring 2027 to meet growing demand.

Space Force triples Lane 1 launch ceiling to $17B

SpaceX

The Department of Defense raised the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion, an $11.4 billion increase for the seven-provider pool of SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Relativity Space and Impulse Space. Combined with the $13.7 billion Lane 2 ceiling, the NSSL Phase 3 vehicle now exceeds $30 billion, reflecting rising demand from Space Data Network, Airborne Moving Target Indicator and Golden Dome mission sets.

SpaceX scrubs Starlink 17-39 at T-zero in rare ignition abort

SpaceX

SpaceX aborted the Falcon 9 Starlink 17-39 mission from Vandenberg on Monday when all nine Merlin engines briefly ignited before shutting down at T-zero, the company's first post-ignition launch abort since June 2024. SpaceX is targeting a quick turnaround for a new attempt to deploy the 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites on booster B1082. The scrub followed a similar post-ignition abort of Starship Flight 13 days earlier.

KBR reorganizes to chase Golden Dome integration work

KBR positioned its digital engineering, space surveillance and missile-defense businesses to compete for Golden Dome, naming Daniel Dant vice president of strategic initiatives and putting Jay Lennon, president of Mission Technology Solutions, in charge of the strategy. The Houston company is among hundreds selected for the Missile Defense Agency's Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) contract vehicle and said it is increasing R&D spending on modeling, simulation, prototyping and classified test facilities.

UK Space Agency delays £75.6M active debris removal award

The UK Space Agency missed its 30 March 2026 deadline to award the £75.6 million Phase 3 contract for the country's first mission to capture and remove two defunct UK-licensed satellites from low Earth orbit, now targeting summer 2026. Astroscale UK and ClearSpace have carried their COSMIC and CLEAR mission concepts through Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies, with one to be selected for full development, launch and in-orbit operations. Spending records show £83.93 million ex-VAT was approved in June 2025, without public explanation for the gap versus the tender estimate.

Skyroot Aerospace becomes India's first private company in orbit

Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Saturday, with the upper stage reaching a 450-kilometer orbit about 15 minutes after liftoff and deploying customer payloads and hosted experiments in a mission dubbed Aagaman. Hyderabad-based Skyroot, founded in 2018 by former ISRO scientists, became India's first space unicorn in May at a $1.1 billion valuation after a $60 million round, bringing total funding above $160 million from investors including Sherpalo Ventures, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund and BlackRock-managed funds.

[ 03 / +27 / -16 ]

Market pulse

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

Gainers+27

Decliners-16

Big mover LMT+10.8%

AST SpaceMobile closed down 4.6% on the delayed tape as the company priced its $1 billion convertible offering at a 20% premium to the July 15 close.

Asset	Snapshot	Move
LMTLockheed Martin	$569.99	+10.8%
RTXRTX Corporation	$208.67	+7.1%
LHXL3Harris Technologies	$298.67	+4.7%
ASTSAST SpaceMobile	$59.11	-4.6%
MDAMDA Space	C$43.49	-2.2%
LUNRIntuitive Machines	$13.81	-2.0%

[ 04 / 4 tracked ]

Launch watch

Schedule and countdowns as recorded in the 2026-07-21 edition.

T-2D 12H

Long March 3B/E | Tianlian 2-06

CASC · Long March 3B/E · LC-2 (LC-2) · Xichang Satellite Launch Center · GTO

T-2D 23H

Starship | Flight 13

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

T-3D 00H

Kinetica 1

CAS Space · Kinetica 1 · Launch Area 130 · Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center

T-4D 14H

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 17-51

SpaceX · Falcon 9 Block 5 · SLC-4E · Vandenberg SFB · LEO

[ 05 / 5 in window ]

Filings

8-K

Northrop Grumman Corporation · 8-K

2026-07-21 · Northrop Grumman issued its second quarter 2026 earnings release covering the quarter ended June 30, 2026, furnished as Exhibit 99.

10-Q

Park Aerospace Corp. · 10-Q

2026-07-20 · Park Aerospace filed its 10-Q for the quarter ended May 31, 2026, showing $80.5 million cash and $8.9 million marketable securities, with subsequent events noting a Tulsa, Oklahoma sublease and continued at-the-market offering program activity.

8-K

Park Aerospace Corp. · 8-K

2026-07-20 · Park Aerospace issued a July 20 news release reporting fiscal 2027 first quarter results for the period ended May 31, 2026.

8-K

AST SpaceMobile, Inc. · 8-K

2026-07-20 · AST SpaceMobile completed its private offering of $1.0 billion of 1.625% convertible senior notes due 2034 at an initial conversion price of approximately $79.57 per Class A share, a 20% premium to the July 15 close, with an option for initial purchasers to buy up to $150 million more within 13 days.

6-K

MDA Space Ltd. · 6-K

2026-07-20 · MDA Space furnished a material change report and a July 6 put option agreement, with certain competitively sensitive information redacted from the exhibit.

[ End of Issue 037 ]

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