Eutelsat will receive a €975 million loan in French export credit financing to fund the Low-Earth Orbit satellites it ordered from Airbus Defence and Space.

The €975 million financing will cover manufacturing of 340 satellites Eutelsat contracted Airbus to build for the OneWeb constellation plus an additional 100 already ordered.

France increased its stake in Eutelsat last year to 29.65%, becoming the company's largest single shareholder.

Airbus Defence and Space will manufacture the satellites for Eutelsat at its facility in Toulouse, France.

Eutelsat intends the new satellites to ensure operational continuity for OneWeb customers as older satellites reach the end of their operational lifetime.

In January, Eutelsat planned to evaluate new business cases for the new satellites, including hosted payloads.

The financing for Eutelsat will be provided by a pool of commercial banks obtained through French export credit agency Bpifrance Assurance Export and backed by the French state.

BlueBird 6 was the heaviest payload ever launched from an LVM3 vehicle from India.

BlueBird 6’s large aperture permits more precise beamforming for narrower, more concentrated coverage.

AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 6 carries a commercial communications array antenna nearly 2,400 square feet in size.

BlueBird 6 is designed to provide cellular broadband from space to ordinary phones.

AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 6 antenna is three times larger than the company’s prior BlueBird 1 through 5 satellites.

AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 6 antenna is the largest commercial communications array antenna deployed in Low-Earth Orbit.

BlueBird 6 is designed to support peak data speeds of 120 Mbps and full 4G and 5G broadband services.

AST SpaceMobile plans to launch 45 to 60 BlueBird satellites with launches every one or two months on average.

AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 6 satellite’s massive array fully deployed in Low-Earth Orbit.

The Indian Space Research Organization launched BlueBird 6 in late December.

BlueBird 6’s antenna size allows reliable transmission and reception of signals from standard handheld devices.

AI models used in spacecraft autonomy can change behavior after rapid updates, requiring wrappers or verification layers to ensure consistent outputs.

For roughly sixty years satellite payloads have been constrained to fit inside rocket fairings, creating a hardware-size limit that Rendezvous Robotics seeks to overcome with in-space assembly.

The CRASH Clock collapsed from 121 days in 2018 to 2.8 days in 2026.

Alan Campbell is a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS.

Ghonhee Lee cites the long history of autonomous cruise missiles as a precedent for validating autonomous systems.

Katherine Monson is the CEO of Hale SWx.

Eutelsat has aggressively automated its fleet operations and planned reductions from more than 50 operators down to five operators to scale mega-constellation management.

Ian Canning is the CEO of Eutelsat Network Solutions.

Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) density spikes caused by solar activity can drag a satellite out of its operational orbit in hours rather than weeks.

The smallsat industry is transitioning from bespoke, hand-flown satellites to swarms, self-assembling structures, and edge-computing nodes that operate autonomously.

Ghonhee Lee is affiliated with Katalyst Space and is preparing a mission to autonomously dock with the NASA Swift observatory later this year.

Katherine Monson’s goal for satellites is to utilize simple onboard logic to perform orbit-raising whenever conditions degrade without waiting for ground permission.

Rendezvous Robotics proposes real-time negotiation protocols for autonomous satellites to handshake and coordinate without a pre-written rulebook.

Orbital AI enables satellites to sense space weather and fire thrusters autonomously to survive acute drag events.

AWS recommends a layered trust approach for autonomous agents that includes verifiable signatures and instrumentation built into agent-to-agent logic to monitor performance in real time.

Joe Landon leads Rendezvous Robotics, which is developing flat, modular tiles that launch stacked and autonomously self-assemble in space into large antennas and power-generation structures.

A fourfold increase in atmospheric drag can irrecoverably degrade a satellite’s orbit if the satellite has electronic propulsion and was not already performing orbit-raising maneuvers before the drag increase.

The SmallSat Symposium highlighted a shift from pure innovation to operational maturity as the commercial space sector deepens ties with the Department of Defense.

The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) are increasingly overlapping in audit responsibilities.

Panelists at the SmallSat Symposium estimated that achieving CMMC Level 2 compliance requires an investment between $100,000 and $200,000 for early-stage companies.

Starfish Space secured a $52.5 million contract with the Space Force.

Financial auditors are increasingly examining government property records to align with the Department of Defense’s internal audit readiness goals.

Companies developing dual-use technologies must track government-funded hardware separately from commercial assets to avoid business system disapprovals or payment withholds.

Prime contractors are contractually obligated to enforce compliance standards on their subcontractors.

Seed-stage space companies do not need to implement the same controls as established defense primes, making over-compliance a potential waste of resources.

Millennium Space Systems requires clear visibility into supplier operations to manage supply-chain risk despite operating with a focus on speed.

Sourcing components from restricted jurisdictions, such as China, can jeopardize DoD satellite programs.

Robust back-office systems and audit-ready fundamentals are becoming as critical as orbital hardware for companies scaling in the commercial space sector.

Errors in founder share redemption can disqualify a company from Qualified Small Business Stock tax benefits.

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 establishes new cybersecurity standards for defense contractors.

Starfish Space implemented a targeted digital enclave to protect Controlled Unclassified Information instead of applying CMMC compliance across the entire company.

The consortium will develop a CubeSat-format satellite prototype conceived exclusively for ground validation to evaluate payload capabilities and associated detection and geolocation algorithms.