NOAA Puts $28M Behind Spire's Hyperspectral Sounder, Iridium Mails Its Merger Proxy, and Roman Moves to the Falcon Heavy Hangar

NOAA awarded Spire Global a two-year, $28 million contract to build and qualify a matured satellite and hyperspectral microwave sounder payload through flight readiness, tailored to an orbit shaped around NOAA's forecasting needs and targeting operational capability no later than 2030. The award follows Spire's January launch of a sounder demonstrator and a $3 million NOAA extension earlier this month. It moves a commercial sensing class that has run as a demonstration toward the operational weather architecture that legacy government microwave sounders hold today.

Iridium mailed its definitive merger proxy, setting a September 24 special meeting on the Rocket Lab acquisition with an August 21 record date, at $27.00 in cash per share plus Rocket Lab stock on a 0.2400 to 0.4000 collar. NASA moved the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to SpaceX's Launch Complex 39A hangar for mating to Falcon Heavy, with liftoff targeted no earlier than August 30. And Ariane 6 stood on the pad in French Guiana with Eumetsat's MTG-I2, scheduled to lift off at 22:10 CEST on August 27.