A pivotal week for the sector: private capital hit an all-time record, Europe finally signed the contracts that give its small launchers a starting line, and two more companies chose the public markets as their financing route. In Argentina, SABIA-Mar cleared a key review and CONAE brought Earth observation to the technical teams of Salta province. And in science, the week closed with the launch of one of the most ambitious space telescopes of the decade.
Economy, investment and industry
1. Private investment in space startups hits a record US$20.3 billion, with four months still to go
Crunchbase published its sector snapshot on August 27: private funding rounds — from seed through growth — in space and satellite companies now total US$20.3 billion in 2026, the highest annual figure the firm has ever recorded, with four months left in the year. What the number leaves out matters just as much: this is private capital, counted separately from SpaceX's June listing, which raised roughly US$75 billion. In other words, the startup layer of the sector is setting its own record without the halo effect of the largest IPO in US market history.
The geographic split is telling: US startups captured around US$12.7 billion, more than 63% of the global total; Chinese companies just over 20%; and European firms about 10%. The report lands weeks after Goldman Sachs published The Second Space Age, which projects that the global space economy will reach US$1.8 trillion by 2035, up from approximately US$626 billion in 2025. The bank's thesis: companies controlling launch, manufacturing, orbital infrastructure and space-derived data stand to capture disproportionate value as the industry matures.
2. ESA signs the first European Launcher Challenge contracts: €543.6 million for three European launchers
On August 27 the European Space Agency signed the first contracts under the European Launcher Challenge, committing €543.6 million to three rocket developers: Germany's Isar Aerospace (€197.8 million, funded mainly by Germany with contributions from Austria and Norway), also-German Rocket Factory Augsburg (€186.9 million, with a UK contribution) and Spain's PLD Space (€158.9 million, funded mainly by Spain with German support).
The fine print is the interesting part: each contract is split into two components, and Component A requires the company to successfully reach orbit before the end of 2027 before ESA begins releasing the remaining funds for operational launches through 2030. It is a milestone-based structure, closer to a service-procurement model than to Europe's traditional development contracts. Isar's Spectrum targets 1,000 kg to low Earth orbit; PLD Space's Miura 5 targets 540 kg to sun-synchronous orbit, flying from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
3. Novaspace forecasts more than 6,500 Earth observation satellites by 2035 and US$155.9 billion in manufacturing
Consultancy Novaspace released the new edition of its Earth Observation Satellite Systems report in late August, forecasting more than 6,500 Earth observation satellites launched by 2035 and US$155.9 billion in manufacturing revenues, driven above all by governments seeking sovereign intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.
The report describes two structural shifts. First, defense demand no longer prioritizes image resolution above everything else, but rather revisit rate, persistence and wide-area coverage: continuous monitoring over the perfect photograph. Second, what Novaspace calls the "skyscraper model": satellite buses are becoming standardized while value shifts toward integrating advanced payloads and multiple intelligence layers. For regional providers and data companies, the message is that the differentiator no longer sits in the bus but in what is mounted on top of it and in downstream processing.
4. Ursa Major goes public via SPAC at a US$2.3 billion valuation
On August 25 US company Ursa Major — a Colorado-based maker of rocket engines, solid rocket motors and hypersonic propulsion systems — announced a business combination agreement with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. III, a SPAC managed by Inflection Point Asset Management. The deal implies a pre-money valuation of roughly US$1.6 billion and a post-transaction valuation of approximately US$2.3 billion, with PIPE commitments of at least US$350 million (about US$110 million funded at signing). The combined company would trade on Nasdaq, with closing expected in the first quarter of 2027.
The revenue trajectory explains the appetite: roughly US$18.5 million in 2024, US$45 million in 2025 and management guidance of approximately US$100 million for 2026. Ursa Major now describes itself as a three-business company — hypersonics, solid rocket motors and space propulsion — a deliberate pivot from purely civil propulsion toward the defense market.
5. Astrum Space also picks the SPAC route: US$1 billion for direct-to-device connectivity across Asia-Pacific
On that same August 27, Singapore-based Astrum Space announced its merger with SPAC Black Spade Acquisition III (NYSE: BIII), in a deal valuing the company at approximately US$1 billion. If no SPAC shareholders redeem their shares, existing Astrum shareholders would retain more than 80% of the combined company. Closing is expected by the end of 2026.
The model differs from the LEO direct-to-device constellations: Astrum is betting on geostationary satellites as a one-to-many broadcast layer complementary to terrestrial mobile networks, combining 25 MHz of contiguous L-band spectrum (1467–1492 MHz) with the 105°E orbital slot. It sells wholesale to mobile operators, broadcasters, governments and enterprises. Founder Zhou Qingzhi separately committed up to US$168 million toward the development and launch of the Neastar-1 satellite, with Impulse Space contracted for deployment and a launch window estimated between late 2028 and the first quarter of 2029. Together with Ursa Major, that makes two space SPACs in a single week: the vehicle is returning to the sector after years in disrepute.
6. Argentina: SABIA-Mar clears its Integration Review and enters the environmental test campaign
CONAE announced on August 27 that Argentina's ocean-observation satellite SABIA-Mar passed its Integration and Pre-Environmental Test Review. The assessment took place in Bariloche from August 10 to 12, with a review board of national and international experts issuing the "GO" on Wednesday the 12th. Teams from CONAE and INVAP — the prime contractor — demonstrated that the hardware, software and documentation configuration is defined and traceable, that test procedures and facilities are mature, and that the risk matrix supports moving forward. The board also reviewed qualification test results for the secondary instruments, carried out by VENG at CONAE's integration and testing laboratory in Córdoba.
The satellite now enters its most demanding phase: tests recreating the pressure, temperature, vibration and acoustic conditions of launch and of the space environment, at INVAP's laboratories in Bariloche. Orbital insertion is planned for the first half of 2027, with a mission to observe seas and coastlines and generate information for fisheries production, maritime security, scientific research and environmental management of the Argentine Sea. In the same week, CONAE also announced that Josefina Pérès has taken office as the agency's new Executive and Technical Director.
7. Salta and CONAE: turning satellite data into provincial decisions
The Teófilo Tabanera Space Centre in Falda del Cañete, Córdoba, hosted on August 26 and 27 the First Earth Observation Liaison and Training Workshop for the Province of Salta, organized by CONAE together with the Government of Salta. Participants included representatives of the provincial Science and Technology Coordination office, the Salta Industrial Parks Authority, the Secretariat of Agricultural Development, the Public Policy Information Agency, the Water Resources Secretariat and Salta's space R&D group.
The session was opened by Livio Gratton (Government of Salta) and Danilo Dadamia, CONAE's Earth Observation manager. Álvaro Soldano, deputy manager for Applications and Products, explained how to access the agency's satellite product catalogue. The delegation toured the CETT laboratories and the SAOCOM mission control centre, and attended presentations on optical Earth observation and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The focus: applying the agreement between CONAE and Salta's Ministry of Education and Culture to concrete needs in environment, agricultural production, water resources and land-use planning. It is precisely the link that turns a national space capability into local economic value — and exactly the kind of connection Argentina Space 2026 aims to multiply.
Science, exploration and missions
8. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has launched, the universe's new great cartographer
On August 30 at 7:26 a.m. EDT, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, whose 27 Merlin engines generated more than 5 million pounds of thrust. The observatory separated from the second stage at 7:57 a.m., 31 minutes after liftoff, and on August 31 executed a 3.5-minute correction burn to fine-tune its trajectory toward Lagrange point L2, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.
Roman carries a primary mirror the same size as Hubble's, but it captures 100 times more sky in each image. That combination — Hubble-class detail with an enormous field of view — will let it map billions of galaxies, potentially detect thousands of exoplanets through gravitational microlensing, study black holes and deliver the data volume needed to attack cosmology's two great puzzles: dark matter and dark energy. It is NASA's flagship mission for the decade and one of the few that can change the scale, not just the precision, of observational astronomy.
9. Starship fires all 33 engines: Flight 14 targets the first full orbital mission
SpaceX completed a full-duration static fire of Booster 21 on Friday, August 28, with all 33 Raptor engines of the Super Heavy booster firing simultaneously. The test closes out the pre-flight campaign for Flight 14, after the upper stage (Ship 41) completed its own 60-second, six-engine static fire on August 21 and a single-engine test on August 19 to validate the deorbit burn.
The significant part is not the test but what it enables: Flight 14 will be Starship's fourteenth test flight, but the first aiming for full orbit. Every previous flight followed a deliberately truncated suborbital or trans-atmospheric trajectory. For the industry, Starship's heavy-lift, low-cost capacity is the bottleneck currently constraining entire business models — from orbital data centres to commercial space stations — and every milestone in the programme reshuffles everyone else's schedule.
10. Mars has a southern interior 200 to 400 °C hotter than its north
A study published on August 27 in Nature, led by Alexander Berne (Caltech, now at the University of Arizona), found that the interior of Mars's southern hemisphere is 200 to 400 degrees Celsius hotter than the north and may be partially molten. The team applied a technique called tidal tomography: it analysed decades of data from Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, tracking minute changes in spacecraft velocity to reconstruct the planet's gravity field and how it varies with the seasons.
The finding extends the famous Martian dichotomy — mountains and cratered terrain in the south, low plains in the north — deep below the surface, and helps explain two known oddities: unusual magnetic signatures in iron-rich southern minerals, and the fact that seismic waves detected by the InSight mission lose energy faster in that half of the planet. A hotter southern mantle suggests Mars once had a magnetic field strong enough to generate that asymmetry. Hypotheses for the cause range from a giant impact in the north to spontaneous convection in the southern mantle, or thick geological structures that trapped heat. As the authors note, understanding this dichotomy is key to reconstructing the planet's hydrological history and the formation of basins that may have held water.
11. The ingredients for rocky planets may have existed just 100 million years after the Big Bang
Research from the University of Portsmouth released in late August argues that the materials needed to build rocky planets could have appeared just 100 million years after the Big Bang — far earlier than believed, and even before the first galaxies had fully emerged.
The mechanism is Population III supernovae: the universe's first stars, enormous and short-lived, whose explosions scattered carbon, oxygen and iron into the surrounding gas. The team's simulations found enough solid material around a young star — and water available in the young stellar system — to form several Earth-sized planets. Until now, the consensus placed the onset of significant planet formation several billion years later in cosmic history. If the result holds, it pushes back the window in which rocky worlds could have existed, and with it the window in which to look for their traces.
12. The universe is still accelerating: an international team refutes the cosmic slowdown hypothesis
An analysis published on August 29 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, led by Phil Wiseman (University of Southampton) and including Nobel laureates Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt, concludes that the expansion of the universe is still accelerating and that the evidence for dark energy remains intact.
The paper responds to a South Korean study published last year suggesting expansion may have entered a decelerating phase, which would have implied that dark energy weakens over time. The Southampton-led team identified two methodological problems in that analysis: it treated the age of a galaxy as if it were the age of the individual star that exploded as a Type Ia supernova, and it did not properly correct for host galaxy mass — a standard step in modern cosmology. "Thankfully we have averted this crisis, but the mystery about why the rate of expansion of the universe is still accelerating remains," Wiseman summarized. The debate arrives just as Roman heads for L2 to measure that same acceleration with unprecedented precision.
Argentina Space 2026: join the founding core of Argentine New Space
Everything above — capital moving at record scale, public contracts shaping an industry, national satellites reaching the test phase, provinces starting to use orbital data to make decisions — is exactly the conversation we want to have in Salta.
Argentina Space 2026 — Argentina driving the New Space Economy will take place on November 11, 12 and 13, 2026 at the Salta Convention Centre. It is the first major national gathering of the space, technology and science industry, bringing together government agencies, companies, universities, startups and investors from Argentina and around the world.
Join Argentina Space 2026, on November 11, 12 and 13 at the Salta Convention Centre, and be part of the founding core of New Space in Argentina. You can take part as an exhibitor, sponsor or attendee. More information: https://argentinaspace.com — Contact: marketing@argentinaspace.com
