Payload
• Jacqueline Feldscher
Apex has signed its first Japanese satellite-bus contract: NEC Corporation will purchase one Aries bus to fly a communications demonstration mission next year. The deal commits a single Aries unit to a near-term LEO comms validation between Apex and NEC.
Reuters
• Will Dunham
By Reuters: Using ground-penetrating radar, NASA's Perseverance rover has detected underground remains of an ancient river delta on Mars in some of the oldest evidence yet obtained showing how water once flowed on the surface of Earth's planetary neighbor.
Space.com
• Robert Z Pearlman
By Space.com: Jessica Meir and Chris Williams spent 7 hours and 2 minutes on EVA today (March 18).
NASA Spaceflight
• Bastiaan Vellekoop, Chris Bergin
By NASA Spaceflight: Starship Flight 12 took another step toward launch, with Booster 19 completing an initial test….
Payload
• Jacqueline Feldscher
By Payload: “There were some changes that we actually had in the works before the anomaly, just to improve margins in the nozzle and solid rocket booster,” Elbon said.
Via Satellite
• Rachel Jewett
By Via Satellite: In a new filing to the FCC, Ligado defended its request to host an L-band payload on AST SpaceMobile satellites, saying the proposal will work within Ligado’s existing L-band coordination agreements and the FCC rules.
Via Satellite
• Rachel Jewett
By Via Satellite: Satellogic detailed plans for its next-generation ‘Merlin’ satellites, designed to provide one-meter resolution. The company said that Merlin will be differentiated by its ability to provide daily mapping of the entire planet, with one-meter spatial resolution.
Bloomberg
• Isabelle Lee, Lu Wang
By Bloomberg: For decades, the path into America’s most important stock benchmarks followed a predictable rhythm: go public, prove yourself, wait your turn. Now the three firms that control those benchmarks are considering whether to rewrite the rules to absorb trillion-dollar IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic.
Space Intel Report
• Peter B de Selding
SpaceNews.com
• Christina Lucas, Natalia Szlarb, Tatiana Sainati
SpaceWatch Global
• Joshua Faleti
