The United States' proposed Golden Dome missile defense system remains highly uncertain, but it is already emerging as a new market that US space and defense startups are racing to enter.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has completed the first flight test of its reusable small experimental rocket RV-X, marking an early step in Japan's effort to develop lower-cost launch technology for future satellite missions.
Governments across Asia and Europe are moving to build or protect homegrown satellite communications, driven by a shared anxiety: that critical connectivity should not rest in foreign, privately controlled hands. Recent policy moves in Japan, China, and the EU reveal the same instinct — technological sovereignty in orbit — pursued through starkly different tools.
China's private rocket industry is entering a make-or-break decade, as low-Earth orbit satellite demand, reusable launch technology, and STAR Market reforms drive the race to build a "China SpaceX."
Rocket Lab is taking a major step toward competing more directly with SpaceX, announcing an agreement to acquire satellite communications provider Iridium Communications in an approximately US$8 billion cash-and-stock transaction. The deal transforms Rocket Lab from a launch and spacecraft manufacturer into a fully vertically integrated space company with its own global satellite communications network, a strategy widely viewed by the market as mirroring SpaceX's integrated business model.
Taiwan-based Tongtai Machine & Tool is accelerating its transformation toward high-value manufacturing, leveraging growing opportunities in AI servers, semiconductors and aerospace. At its annual general meeting on June 17, shareholders approved all proposals and elected a new board that includes several aerospace industry veterans, underscoring the company's commitment to expanding into advanced manufacturing sectors despite a challenging operating environment.
As artificial intelligence drives an insatiable demand for computing power, China is beginning to look beyond terrestrial data centers and edge computing toward a new frontier: space.
