The full image capacity of the Pléiades Neo Next program will be available to sectors including defence and intelligence, agriculture, environment, maritime, disaster response, mapping, location-based services, civil engineering, urban planning, and utilities.

The Pléiades Neo Next program will introduce satellite assets with 20-cm-class native resolution.

The first Airbus Pléiades Neo Next satellite is scheduled to launch in early 2028 from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Images from Pléiades Neo Next will be received through customers’ Direct Receiving Stations on the ground or via the OneAtlas digital platform shortly after collection.

Avio’s Vega C rocket will carry the first Pléiades Neo Next satellite into orbit.

The investment plan includes spy satellites, space planes, and non-kinetic systems such as lasers aimed at protecting German and allied assets in orbit.

Rheinmetall is in active talks with satellite manufacturer OHB to form a joint bid for upcoming German military space projects under this framework.

Previous generations of German military communications satellites, such as SATCOMBw 3, operated in geostationary orbit.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius considers independent orbital situational awareness necessary to prevent nations from going blind during a crisis.

Germany will not field destructive weapons in orbit but will prepare to respond to space-based aggression through electromagnetic, optical, and laser means.

SATCOM Stage 4 will consist of at least 100 satellites and some reports suggest the constellation could include up to 200 satellites.

The €35 billion investment marks a shift in German defense policy toward developing independent mission-critical space capabilities rather than relying solely on allied systems.

Germany will deploy small, highly maneuverable inspector satellites designed to approach and monitor hostile assets.

SATCOM Stage 4 is modeled after the U.S. Space Development Agency’s Warfighter Space Architecture to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency communications and missile tracking.

SATCOM Stage 4 will use a proliferated LEO (pLEO) architecture rather than geostationary orbits used by previous German military satellites.

SATCOM Stage 4 satellites are designed to network tanks, ships, drones, and individual soldiers in real time.

The flagship of the initiative is SATCOM Stage 4, a secure, encrypted military constellation based in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).

The German strategy prioritizes non-destructive disruption capabilities that avoid creating orbital debris, including systems for dazzling or interfering with adversary spacecraft and targeting ground-based control stations.

The pLEO design of SATCOM Stage 4 intends that the loss of individual satellites will not compromise the entire network.

Major General Michael Traut, head of German Space Command, unveiled a €35 billion investment plan on February 3, 2026 to overhaul Germany’s military space architecture by 2030.

The German initiative involves major European aerospace primes including Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo to support a resilient satellite communications alternative to commercial systems like Starlink.

The German military space investment program is a direct response to a more contested orbital environment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

During tanking, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a liquid hydrogen leak in an interface used to route cryogenic propellant into the rocket’s core stage.

The crew will stay in Houston, exit quarantine, and resume training.

The crew had not traveled from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before the wet dress rehearsal.

NASA has decided to push the launch to the March launch window.

Engineers conducted a first run at terminal countdown operations during the test, counting down to approximately 5 minutes before the ground launch sequencer automatically stopped the countdown due to a spike in the liquid hydrogen leak rate.

The cold-weather impacts would have required additional attention on launch day.

A valve associated with Orion crew module hatch pressurization that was recently replaced required retorquing during closeout operations.

A team of five personnel was sent to the launch pad to finish Orion closeout operations after tanking.

Orion closeout operations took longer than planned.

NASA scheduled a media conference today to discuss the wet dress rehearsal results.

Engineers stopped the flow of liquid hydrogen into the core stage, allowed the interface to warm so seals could reseat, and adjusted propellant flow in attempts to resolve the leak.

NASA’s wet dress rehearsal concluded early this morning.

The first launch window in March is March 6 at 8:29 p.m. EST.

Teams successfully filled all tanks in both the core stage and the interim cryogenic propulsion stage during the wet dress rehearsal.

Several audio communication channel dropouts reoccurred during the wet dress rehearsal.

Cold weather affected several cameras and other equipment but did not impede wet dress rehearsal activities.

Once a new launch date is set the crew will enter quarantine again approximately two weeks before launch.

Once the launch date is set NASA will conduct another wet dress rehearsal and simulate the countdown.

Engineers have been troubleshooting dropouts of audio communication channels across ground teams in the weeks leading up to the test.

Amazon Leo intends to meet the final deployment deadline of all 3,232 satellites by mid-2029.

Amazon requested a 24-month extension from the Federal Communications Commission on January 30, 2026 to meet a critical deployment milestone for its satellite broadband network Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper).

Amazon added 10 additional Falcon 9 launches and 12 more New Glenn missions to its launch manifest in January 2026.

Amazon has invested more than $10 billion in its satellite broadband program and secured over 100 launch missions, the largest commercial launch procurement in history.

Amazon booked almost all of its initial deployment capacity on three launch vehicles that had not yet flown or were in early testing: ULA’s Vulcan, Arianespace’s Ariane 6, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn.

Amazon cited a near-term shortage of available rockets as the reason for requesting the extension from the FCC.

Amazon requested that the deadline to deploy half of its constellation, roughly 1,618 satellites, be moved from July 30, 2026 to July 30, 2028.

Amazon initially diversified launch bookings across United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Blue Origin.

Amazon rebranded Project Kuiper as Amazon Leo.