Airbus will place a dedicated Ultra High Frequency (UHF) military payload onboard Eutelsat’s 36D satellite to serve Europe’s and NATO’s armed forces, Airbus said. Military UHF satcoms are used by the armed forces for operations on land, at sea and in the air, Airbus said.

The Goonhilly Earth Station in the UK will support the Moon missions of Intuitive Machines (IM), the station and the U.S. startup announced. IM has entered a long-term agreement with Goonhilly to support every stage of IM’s missions to the Moon, Goonhilly and IM said.

The LEO operator OneWeb received a $500 million injection from its large shareholder Bharti, totalling its secured funding to $2.4 billion, the company said. Bharti exercised a call option under the existing shareholders’ agreement to invest an additional $500 million, and will then hold 38.6% of the company, it said.

Leaf Space, a ground segment service provider, is adding three stations to its global Leaf Line Network, the company based in Washington, D.C., said. The new stations will be installed in Sri Lanka, the Azores and Scotland, the company said, "enhancing Leaf Space’s capability to provide solutions and services to its growing list of customers".

The smallsat manufacturer LeoStella delivered its first satellite to Loft Orbital Solutions, a payload service company, for a rideshare launch on Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, the company said. LeoStella delivered the “Yet Another Mission-3” (YAM-3) satellite, the company said.

Airbus will continue to provide the UK Royal Navy with satellite-based maritime surveillance services, the company said. The UK Royal Navy has awarded a 12-month contract extension to Airbus covering the continued provision of satellite-based maritime surveillance services for the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC), Airbus said.

Paris, 28 June 2021. – Virgin Galactic obtained a license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow it to fly customers to space, the company said. The FAA expanded Virgin Galactic’s license as a commercial space transportation operator to allow it to carry people – or ”space flight participants”, as it said. 

Paris, 28 June 2021. – NASA proceeds to repair the computer on board the Hubble Space Telescope, the U.S. agency said, but was not able, so far, the reboot the backup computer. NASA is continuing to diagnose a problem with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope, the agency said, after completing another set of tests on June 23 and 24. 

Connecting sensors and soldiers: the U.S. Army has contracted Iridium to develop a smallsat GPS payload, the company said. The contract is worth up to $30 million. Iridium will develop a smallsat payload that supports navigation and GPS systems for the army, Iridium said.

Swissto12 and SatixFy cooperate to develop and sell telecom payloads for satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and Geostationary Orbit (GEO), the companies said. SatixFy contributes its software defined, high bandwidth product portfolio; Swissto12 contributes its active antenna technology that leverages 3D printing.