The Trump administration's plan to gut the Office of Space Commerce and cancel the government's first civilian-run space traffic control program is gaining plenty of detractors.

Earlier this week, seven space industry trade groups representing more than 450 companies sent letters to House and Senate leaders urging them to counter the White House's proposal. A spokesperson for the military's Space Operations Command, which currently has overall responsibility for space traffic management, said it will "continue to advocate" for a civilian organization to take over the Space Force's role as orbital traffic cop.

Giveth and taketh away

The White House's budget request submitted to Congress for fiscal year 2026 would slash the Office of Space Commerce's budget from $65 million to $10 million and eliminate funding for the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). The TraCSS program was established in the Department of Commerce after Trump signed a policy directive in his first term as president to reform how the government supervises the movements of satellites and space debris in orbit.

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After flying three missions into low-Earth orbit this year, Varda Space Industries appears to be making credible progress toward developing the nascent manufacturing-in-space industry.

Investors seem to think the same, as the California-based company announced an impressive $187 million Series C round of funding on Thursday. This brings the company's total amount of money raised since its founding in 2021 to $325 million.

"A decent chunk of the capital is going to go toward scaling up our production and operations," said the company's cofounder and president, Delian Asparouhov, in an interview. "And another chunk of that we're going to invest in our next-generation capabilities and spacecraft. With a vehicle like ours, there is a benefit to increasing the percentage of the total vehicle that is reusable."

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Six weeks after he terminated the nomination of Jared Isaacman to become NASA Administrator, President Trump moved on Wednesday evening to install a new temporary leader for the space agency.

The newly named interim administrator, Sean Duffy, already has a full portfolio: He is serving as the Secretary of Transportation, a Cabinet-level position that oversees 55,000 employees at thirteen agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Sean is doing a TREMENDOUS job in handling our Country's Transportation Affairs, including creating a state-of-the-art Air Traffic Control systems, while at the same time rebuilding our roads and bridges, making them efficient, and beautiful, again," Trump wrote on his social media network Wednesday evening. "He will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time."

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Northwood Space has completed initial testing of the second generation of its phased array antenna technology, which can simultaneously communicate with spacecraft across a range of orbits, from near Earth all the way out to geostationary space.

The prototype gateway was able to connect with several satellites in space during recent testing, said Bridgit Mendler, co-founder and chief executive of Northwood Space. This successful demonstration has given Northwood confidence to move into commercial deployment of the company's antennas within the coming months.

"This system, with planned multinational deployment this year, will be the first building block in our network that over the next three years aims to support 500 simultaneous spacecraft across multiple frequencies, data rates, and orbits," she said.

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The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent's incumbent launch service provider.

The five companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar's Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March.

None of these companies are guaranteed ESA contracts or funding. Over the next several months, the European Space Agency and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA's ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency's budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.

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Open clusters of stars—which consist of dozens up to a few thousand stars—are an interesting tool for astronomers to study the Universe.

That's because all of the stars in such a cluster formed more or less at the same time, allowing astronomers to compare different types of stars, in terms of size and composition, which are all of a similar age. This is useful for understanding how different kinds of stars evolve over time.

Some of these open clusters are pretty famous, such as the Pleiades cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters. This is relatively close to Earth, just 444 light-years away. Others are much more distant, such as NGC 460 and NGC 456. They reside in a nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and are the subject of today's post.

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Two Chinese satellites have rendezvoused with one another more than 20,000 miles above the Earth in what analysts believe is the first high-altitude attempt at orbital refueling.

China's Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites, known as SJ-21 and SJ-25 for short, likely docked together in geosynchronous orbit sometime last week. This is the conclusion of multiple civilian satellite trackers using open source imagery showing the two satellites coming together, then becoming indistinguishable as a single object.

Chinese officials have released no recent public information on what the two satellites are up to, but they've said a bit about their missions in prior statements.

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Welcome to Edition 8.01 of the Rocket Report! Today's edition will be a little shorter than normal because, for one day only, we celebrate fake rockets—fireworks—rather than the real thing. For our American readers, we hope you have a splendid Fourth of July holiday weekend. For our non-American readers, you may be wondering what the heck is happening in our country right now. Alas, making sense of <waves hands> all this is beyond the scope of this humble little newsletter.

As always, we welcome reader submissions , and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Will Orbex ever launch an orbital rocket ? Orbex, a launch services company based in the United Kingdom, has announced the postponement of its first orbital launch to 2026 due to infrastructure limitations and other issues, Orbital Today reports . At the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, Orbex chief executive Miguel Bello Mora announced that the company is now targeting next year for the liftoff of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord in Scotland. He said the delay is partly due to the limited launch infrastructure at SaxaVord and a "bottleneck" in site operations.

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A NASA spacecraft bound for an unexplored metal-rich asteroid has reignited its plasma thrusters, continuing its cruise deeper into the Solar System after switching to a backup fuel line.

The $1.4 billion Psyche mission, built to explore an asteroid with the same name, has four electric thrusters fueled by xenon gas. Psyche's solar electric propulsion system is more fuel efficient than conventional rocket thrusters, and it works by flowing xenon through an electromagnetic field, which ionizes the gas and expelling the ions at high speed to produce thrust.

The plasma engines generate lower thrust than chemical rocket engines, but they can accumulate years of run time over the course of a mission, enabling a spacecraft to make significant changes in its velocity to steer its way through space.

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