STILEMI includes planned facilities for advanced radio-frequency testing, advanced adaptive optics, and development and testing of optical components for wide-field optical telescopes.

The CTA++ project is funded with €18,777,000 and includes partners Università degli Studi di Palermo, Politecnico di Bari, Università degli Studi di Bari, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, and Università degli Studi di Siena.

INAF will use the funds to finance projects for strengthening research activities, developing innovative technologies, and building new astrophysics laboratories.

The DLR facility for space propulsion in Lampoldshausen played a major role in the development and qualification of the Ariane 6 propulsion systems.

The Ariane 6 version with four boosters is designated Ariane 64.

ArianeGroup Germany will assemble the Vinci engine in Lampoldshausen in the future.

The Ariane 6 with four solid rocket boosters is scheduled to make its first launch from Kourou, French Guiana on 12 February 2026 at 17:45 CET (13:45 local time).

The Ariane 6 upper stage is designed to completely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere after mission completion to avoid leaving debris.

The Ariane 6 in the four-booster configuration can deliver about 20 tonnes of payload to orbit.

The 12 February 2026 Ariane 6 flight from Kourou will carry 32 Amazon satellites to a low Earth orbit at an altitude of 465 kilometers.

Engine installation into the Ariane 6 upper stage will continue to take place in Bremen.

The Ariane 6 upper stage is developed and manufactured by ArianeGroup in Bremen as ESA’s prime contractor.

German contributions to the Ariane 6 program are coordinated by the German Space Agency (Deutsche Raumfahrtagentur) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

ArianeGroup is shifting full end production, system integration, and flight acceptance testing from Vernon, France to Germany.

Germany is the second-largest financial contributor to the Ariane 6 program after France within the European Space Agency (ESA).

DLR Lampoldshausen conducted tests of the Vinci upper-stage engine and the complete Ariane 6 upper stage with integrated avionics, including vacuum altitude-simulation testing.

Ariane 6 is a key element for Europe’s independent access to space.

The four-booster Ariane 6 configuration carries roughly twice the payload of the two-booster version.

The Vinci engine is capable of multiple ignitions and has a long operational lifetime.

DLR Lampoldshausen’s test stands and infrastructure enable testing of engines and complete rocket stages under flight-representative conditions, including vacuum simulations.

Ariane 64 is intended to deploy large satellite constellations for commercial and institutional customers because of its high payload capacity and flexibility.

The core of the Ariane 6 upper stage is the Vinci engine, which uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellants.

New Zealand now exceeds Russia in annual launch numbers.

Analysts project about 72,000 active satellites within the next five years.

Russia has attempted to jam Starlink and to interrupt Starlink ground service operations and cyber functions.

Paul Struhsaker identified the conflict in Ukraine as an inflection point where commercial space assets became military targets.

AI-driven malware named Promptlock has emerged targeting space systems.

Solar Cycle 25 is exposing commercial-grade satellite components to radiation levels they were not designed to withstand.

The Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and the Golden Dome concept propose launching bundles of interoperable satellites that communicate and reconfigure autonomously to increase resilience.

The 1961 Hardtack Orange high-altitude nuclear tests destroyed contemporary satellites and caused power grid outages in Hawaii.

Paul Struhsaker is the CEO of Arrasar Partners.

A global outage in July 2025 took Starlink offline for hours.

Supply chain weaknesses in the commercial space industry have been exposed.

GPS jamming in the Baltic Sea has surged and disrupted thousands of vessels and civil aviation corridors.

MTN will deploy Amazon’s newly unveiled maritime-grade hardware that uses electronically steered phased-array antennas to maintain connectivity in high sea states without moving parts.

MTN’s Amazon Leo integration targets commercial shipping, yachting, offshore energy, and cruise sectors.

Amazon is in a high-tempo launch phase to meet regulatory requirements for its constellation.

Amazon requested a 24-month extension from the FCC in late January to fulfill its license mandate of 3,236 satellites.

Amazon’s commercial rollout of Amazon Leo is on track for Q1 2026.

MTN will leverage Amazon’s fleet of more than 150 production satellites currently in orbit to provide service.

Trevor Vieweg is Head of Global Business for Amazon Leo.

The reseller agreement between MTN Satellite Communications and Amazon Leo was announced on Feb. 10.

Steve Ritacco is Senior Vice President of Technology and Product Development at MTN Satellite Communications.

Amazon Leo is designed to integrate with Amazon Web Services to allow maritime operators to move data from ship to cloud over a private, secure backbone.

MTN is set to initiate pilot deployments of Amazon Leo for its key cruise and offshore customers immediately.

MTN’s multi-network portfolio already includes Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb.

The MTN–Amazon Leo deal positions MTN to provide near-global coverage from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific.

MTN’s partnership with Amazon Leo integrates Amazon’s high-capacity LEO constellation into MTN’s multi-orbit network.

MTN Satellite Communications secured an agreement to become one of the first authorized maritime resellers for Amazon Leo.

MTN’s multi-network architecture combining Amazon Leo, Starlink, and Eutelsat OneWeb is designed to offer redundancy for mission-critical vessel operations and crew welfare.