Space digest — Oct 25, 2026
Top line: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have jointly asked the FCC to strip 290 MHz of mid-band spectrum out of the plan that lets satellites serve ordinary phones — the first coordinated carrier counterattack against SpaceX's direct-to-cell build-out, landing days before the commission's planned October 29 vote on a direct-to-device spectrum auction. Ukraine is disputing Elon Musk's claim that its military violated Starlink's terms of service, even as President Volodymyr Zelensky confirms Starshield operations are back at normal speed. At Starbase, SpaceX has confirmed a full-duration 33-engine static fire for Starship Flight 15's Booster 22 ahead of the targeted November 8 launch, with new reporting putting Starship's Florida debut — Flight 16 — and a possible Roberts Road expansion in motion.
- US carriers ask the FCC to cut 290 MHz from the satellite spectrum plan
- NASA's two-lander Artemis IV plan: Starship and Blue Moon work differently on the same mission
- Ukraine disputes Musk's Starlink terms claim as Starshield speeds restore
US carriers ask the FCC to cut 290 MHz from the satellite spectrum plan
Sources Shattered
What happened: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have asked the FCC to drop 290 MHz of 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz spectrum from its supplemental coverage from space plan, Shattered reports in coverage published in the early hours of October 25, Eastern. That plan is the regulatory framework that lets satellite operators transmit directly to standard phones.
What's genuinely new: The three largest US mobile carriers are now on the docket as coordinated opposition, a material pushback against a spectrum plan that had so far only moved in SpaceX's favor — the FCC cleared the Starlink Mobile application on October 6 (up to 15,000 next-generation satellites, plus a waiver to serve phones without going through a traditional wireless carrier), and SpaceX separately bought roughly $8 billion of low-band spectrum that Musk called the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle. Mid-band 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz holdings are the workhorse frequencies for carrier 5G ground networks. The filing lands four days before the FCC's scheduled October 29 vote on a direct-to-device spectrum auction.
Watch: The October 29 FCC vote; whether the FCC entertains the carve-out or the carriers escalate (litigation-grade filings, congressional letters); and how the outcome reshapes the Starlink Mobile service plan, whose FAA environmental review is already docketed separately.
NASA's two-lander Artemis IV plan: Starship and Blue Moon work differently on the same mission
Sources Starlust
What happened: NASA's plan to fly both landers on Artemis IV — the Moon landing mission targeted for 2028 — contains major changes, and SpaceX and Blue Origin will use different operational methods for Starship and Blue Moon during that single mission, Starlust reports on October 25.
What's genuinely new: The operational distinction between the two landers within one mission — not just that both fly, but how their roles differ in the revised profile. It lands against a revised campaign in which NASA has said it will not choose between the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers until Earth-orbit test results are in (reported October 24), with uncrewed lunar landings by both targeted for early 2028, and the broader Apollo-urgency frame of a Moon base and landings "in as little as two years" that the wire coverage carried October 24.
Watch: The specifics of each lander's operational method as NASA details them; whether the 2028 Artemis IV landing target survives its own test schedule; and the uncrewed landing demonstrations that gate the final selection.
Ukraine disputes Musk's Starlink terms claim as Starshield speeds restore
Sources Click Orlando Yahoo News
What happened: Ukrainian officials have disputed Elon Musk's claim that their military violated Starlink's terms of service by using the network for offensive purposes, Click Orlando reports on October 25. In its October 25 war-day roundup, Yahoo News adds that President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed Starshield operations are running at normal speed again, and that Musk named an alleged terms violation as the reason for the service disruptions.
What's genuinely new: The dispute now has both sides named: Musk's accusation — an alleged terms-of-service violation as the stated cause of the Starshield slowdowns — and Ukraine's official denial of it, capped by Zelensky's confirmation that speeds are restored. It lands against a storyline spine built through October 14–19: Ukrainian officials' drone-throttling allegations, Reuters reporting that the order to throttle Starshield for Ukraine came from the White House, battlefield terminals throttled to 160 km/h with drones losing guidance, and Musk's October 19 statement attributing any speed or usage limits ("decided by the US military") to the US military rather than to himself.
Watch: Whether SpaceX, the US military or the White House addresses the terms-violation claim and who set the limits; what "normal speed" means for the 160 km/h figure; and whether the restored service settles the dispute or the denial escalates it.
Brief
- Starlink Group 15-15 flies after three scrubs. Shattered reports the Starlink Group 15-15 mission — 27 satellites lofted from Vandenberg Space Force Base — finally reached orbit after three launch scrubs, with a timeline explaining why the mission slipped. The additions are the scrub count and the slip detail on a launch already being read as a datapoint in Falcon 9's slowing Starlink cadence.
- Booster 22's static fire is done — full duration, confirmed by SpaceX. NASASpaceflight relayed SpaceX's confirmation in a post at about 4:14 PM Eastern on October 25: a good full-duration 33-engine static fire for the Super Heavy booster preparing for Flight 15. The test had been announced on the same NSF feeds at about 7:38 AM Eastern (post), with follow-ups showing the transport stand moving away ahead of the firing (second post); propellant loading showed by about 8:52 AM Eastern (post) and the firing itself by about 9:24 AM Eastern (post). SpaceX's own announcement of the full-duration 33-engine firing came slightly earlier, relayed by Jeff Foust at about 3:49 PM Eastern (post), and NSF's evening feed (about 6:07 PM Eastern, post) adds that several future vehicles are already undergoing preparation for their upcoming missions. Booster 22 arrived at the pad on October 24 and was lifted onto the mount the same day, ahead of Flight 15's targeted November 8 launch from Starbase, which is planned as the first attempt to catch both stages.
- Flight 16 is being readied — as Starship's Florida debut, with a possible Roberts Road expansion. NASASpaceflight reports (October 25, ~2:21 PM Eastern) that as SpaceX prepares to fly Flight 15 in November on the back of a successful static fire, the company is also pushing Flight 16 toward flying from Florida — Starship's debut from the Cape — with a possible Roberts Road expansion in view; NSF's status update came with fresh flyover photos of the facilities. A development of the two-coast Starship cadence storyline, which already carried Flight 16 (set to fly Starlink 30-1) toward an October 30 net-launch date.
- Falcon 9's exit could come faster, Polish coverage says. Space24 reports the retirement of Falcon 9 may come much sooner than many expect, with the prospect already causing a stir in the space sector (October 25) — a wider echo of the end-of-commercial-Falcon story, which has included the closure of new Falcon 9 commercial reservations reported October 23 and mid-October European coverage of a looming rocket shortage.
- The Q2 quarter behind the revenue arc. Shattered looks back at SpaceX's second quarter (October 25) — $7.8 billion in sales, up 92% — as the run-up to Musk's floated possibility of $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, ahead of the third-quarter results SpaceX reported October 20 ($14.6 billion, with AI infrastructure the majority of it).
- $40 billion of debt for GPUs. Star-Telegram reports (October 25, article posted the evening Eastern) that Musk said SpaceX has closed $40 billion in debt financing specifically to fund graphics processing units, citing the company's investment-grade status and its Starlink and launch revenue. A new specific figure on the financing side of the AI-compute arc, which already carries AI infrastructure as the majority of the third-quarter revenue SpaceX reported October 20 ($14.6 billion).
- Starfall's military resupply gets program framing. Defence Industry EU reports the Air Force Research Laboratory has tested a SpaceX-designed Starfall capsule carrying survival equipment under its Rocket Cargo program (October 25) — attaching the program name to the military-resupply use case first reported October 22, when AFRL's point-to-point cargo-pod testing of the capsule surfaced. New Atlas carries the same test the same day, describing the Air Force and SpaceX dropping a survival kit equipped with a liferaft from orbit — an independent second outlet, adding no new program fact.
- Blue Origin is pouring the New Glenn 9x4 pad's foundations. A NASASpaceflight repost of Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp's update, published the afternoon of October 25, reports progress at pad LC-36B on October 24: roughly 450 truckloads of concrete, lined bumper-to-bumper and stretching nearly 3 miles up the coast, supported a 4,500-cubic-yard pour for the pile caps — the foundation for Blue Origin's New Glenn 9x4 pad, with three more placements to go for a total of 15,000 cubic yards. New concrete-volume detail for the second-pad build-out on a ground-infrastructure storyline whose LC-36A launch tower was fully re-stacked on October 24.
- Neutron still slipping in circulation. An MSN-circulated piece says Rocket Lab postponed Neutron's launch again, but it names no new date or cause beyond what is already public — the first flight was officially moved into 2027 on October 14–15 after the carbon-fibre tank-dome faults, with Q1 2027 floated. No original outlet is identified in the syndication, so read it as an echo rather than a report.
- Rocket Lab: the backlog against the drawdown. 24/7 Wall St. reports (October 25) that Rocket Lab's shares have fallen nearly 30% in a month while its order backlog surged 137% year over year, arguing the company is playing a bigger game than rocket launches. Two new figures on a tape already running the Neutron first-flight slip into 2027 and the third-quarter results Rocket Lab has set for November 9, after the stock's mid-October slide ($51.42 on October 15, $51.22 on October 23).
- Why would Musk merge SpaceX and Tesla? St. Louis Post-Dispatch takes up (October 25) Musk's publicly stated view that combining Tesla and SpaceX would be a good idea, in an explainer of the case for folding the carmaker into the rocket maker — restating the merger idea Musk has discussed rather than reporting a new step toward one.
- Musk against Bezos, again. Xataka and an MSN relay carry Musk's claim that even rivals' future plans lag Starship, plus figures the relays attribute to SpaceX: Starlink past 10,000 satellites in orbit and a $14.6 billion figure that matches the third-quarter revenue SpaceX reported on October 20 (with AI infrastructure the majority of it). Note the orbit-with-26-satellites milestone the Xataka piece touts is the September Starship flight that reached orbit and deployed all 26 production Starlink V3s — not a new flight. Both items are relay-grade; the spat itself is color, not news.
- Artemis III recapped. A Geo.tv explainer describes Artemis III as a two-week mission planned for summer 2027 in which four astronauts practice docking with experimental lunar landers — a recap of NASA's stated target from the October 23 Kennedy briefing, adding no new schedule fact.