Orbit Fab is working with Airbus Defense and Space to assess the feasibility of incorporating Orbit Fab’s RAFTI refueling valve into possible future Airbus geostationary satellites.

Jacob Geer is the Managing Director of Orbit Fab in Europe.

Redwire and Los Alamos National Laboratory successfully completed a demonstration of a new deployable aeroshell on November 19, 2025.

Los Alamos National Laboratory provided the payload and was responsible for integration for the demonstration.

The successful deployable aeroshell demonstration enables prospects for future larger, more capable deployable heat shields to increase access to space and enable data and payload recovery.

NASA Ames Research Center assisted Redwire and Los Alamos National Laboratory with the November 19, 2025 deployable aeroshell demonstration.

Redwire provided the deployment mechanism and structural aeroshell for the demonstration.

Deployable heat shields protect spacecraft from extreme heat encountered at high speeds.

Redwire’s deployment mechanism received the command to release and deployed the unfolding aeroshell after ejection.

Redwire and Los Alamos National Laboratory plan to continue collaborative efforts following the demonstration.

Redwire previously collaborated on NASA’s Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID), a new large inflatable heat shield.

Integration of the aeroshell structure was completed at Redwire’s newly opened Firestone Rapid Capabilities Facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The experiment launched on a UP Aerospace sounding rocket from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The spacecraft exited the atmosphere and ejected the experimental heat shield during the demonstration.

Outdoor DALEC testing was conducted in a quarry selected for its rough, rocky terrain and open layout as a lunar surface analogue.

Phase II testing validated DALEC’s distributed localization algorithms and embedded electronics platform.

DALEC enables spacecraft, autonomous vehicles, rovers, and astronauts to estimate their own positions and the relative positions of nearby assets using onboard sensors.

The two-year Phase II effort concluded in January.

Key Phase II results included stable real-time software running on embedded Linux hardware.

Key Phase II results included decentralized multi-agent localization that significantly improves position estimates compared to non-collaborative approaches.

Key Phase II results included successful operation with minimal communication bandwidth.

DALEC fuses multiple sensing modalities to provide robustness in areas with uniform terrain, changing lighting conditions, or partial sensor failures.

During Phase II, Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated the fully integrated DALEC system in simulation, an indoor laboratory environment, and an outdoor lunar-like test environment.

Astrobotic is evaluating next steps to further mature DALEC and explore a path toward a deployable product supporting future lunar missions and distributed PNT infrastructure.

Phase II demonstrations included multiple mobile agents and stationary landmarks sharing data over a low-bandwidth mesh network.

Astrobotic partnered with Carnegie Mellon University on a NASA Small Business Technology Transfer Phase II project for Distributed Agent Localization Estimation for spaceCraft (DALEC).

The DALEC Phase II effort advanced the system from Technology Readiness Level 3 to Technology Readiness Level 5.

Key Phase II results included robustness to sensor dropouts.

DALEC is designed to provide positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities in environments where GPS is unavailable, including the lunar surface.

Key Phase II results included drop-in and drop-out capability for agents joining or leaving the network.

Sean McGill is Senior Project Manager at Astrobotic.

DALEC is designed as a flexible, low size, weight, power, and cost sensor package that can be integrated onto a wide range of lunar assets and communicate with any other DALEC-enabled system.

DALEC combines visual odometry and other onboard sensing with ultra-wideband radio frequency ranging between agents.

DALEC aligns with Astrobotic’s LunaGrid architecture as a core localization and mapping capability within a broader autonomous agent framework.

Each DALEC-enabled asset uses onboard sensors such as cameras or laser scanners to estimate its position and shares that information wirelessly with nearby assets.

DALEC supports interoperable, low-bandwidth sharing of navigation data among assets to enable distributed positioning, navigation, and timing infrastructure.

The Phase II project produced multi-agent simulation tools with realistic sensor and communication modeling.

Teleports are fixed installations that cannot maneuver like satellites.

Teleport sites commonly have large antenna farms that are easily identifiable in satellite imagery or open-source mapping platforms.

A teleport that loses all fiber connectivity is effectively offline.

Physical protection measures for teleports can include reinforced equipment buildings, protected or underground technical rooms, distributed antenna layouts, and enhanced perimeter security systems.

United Teleports specializes in television content distribution and VSAT data services across the Americas.

The Ha’Ela facility is located in an active conflict zone.

Virtualized gateway technologies and cloud-based network management platforms enable more rapid rerouting of traffic between teleports.

Many satellite services rely on primary uplink locations with limited redundancy beyond backup power systems or spare equipment.

World Teleport Association security assessments have focused predominantly on cyber threats such as IP-enabled systems, denial-of-service attacks, and signal interference.

Ricardo Dias is CEO and co-founder of United Teleports, a Miami-based teleport operator.

SES operates 45 teleports worldwide serving its GEO and MEO constellations.

Teleport operators already support each other during satellite relocations, maintenance windows, or temporary capacity demands.

The Ha’Ela teleport facility in central Israel was damaged by a missile strike on March 9.