Virgin Galactic on October 28 moved its first Delta-class suborbital spacecraft, D1, from its assembly facility in Mesa, Arizona, to its operations base at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The transfer marks the next-generation fleet's shift from assembly to flight-test preparations, with commercial crewed flights targeted for early in the second quarter of 2027.

Taiwan's Kuen Tong Technology, a high-end precision metal components maker and major supplier to a US low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite operator, is set to list on the Taipei Exchange's Emerging Stock Board on October 29 at a reference price of NT$390 (approx. US$12.03) per share. Riding rising satellite demand, the company plans to expand production capacity in Thailand from 2027 while developing AI server liquid cooling and semiconductor equipment businesses.

Japan is preparing to shift operations of its flagship H3 rocket from the state space agency to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), a move aimed at cutting launch costs and making the country's main launcher a more credible rival to SpaceX in the commercial market.

Elon Musk recently confirmed the possibility of a merger between SpaceX and Tesla, signaling an ambition to redefine competition in the AI era beyond individual products and technological advantages toward integration across the entire industrial value chain, encompassing semiconductors, energy, computing, communications, and autonomous systems.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved Amazon Leo’s approximately US$11.57 billion acquisition of Globalstar, giving Amazon access to about 25 MHz of mobile satellite service (MSS) spectrum, roughly 24 satellites and related infrastructure to support its push into the direct-to-device (D2D) market.

Since Elon Musk publicly confirmed that Tesla and SpaceX are evaluating a potential merger, the prospect has stirred widespread speculation over what could become the largest corporate transaction in history—and whether combining two of Musk's biggest technology platforms would actually create value beyond the sprawling ecosystem they already share.

Taiwan's aerospace components maker Aero Win Technology is positioning itself for a new growth cycle, capitalizing on robust aircraft engine demand while expanding its role in next-generation development programs. With global aircraft production struggling to keep pace with orders, the company's gross margin reached a record 26% in the first half of 2026, up 8pp year-over-year.

The Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) said two 8U CubeSats developed by Tron Future Tech successfully reached orbit on October 20 aboard SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, advancing Taiwan's low Earth orbit (LEO) communications technology program. T.MicroSat-3 and T.MicroSat-4 launched at 7:04 p.m. Taiwan time to a mid-inclination orbit and established initial contact with ground stations in Chile and Azerbaijan before 3 a.m. Taiwan time on October 21, with their systems operating normally and sufficient power available.

The AI infrastructure race is increasingly becoming a contest over who can turn electrical capacity, cooling systems, and hardware into usable compute the fastest.

SpaceX's third quarter of 2026 reshaped the business. Its Super Intelligence (SI) segment, the compute and AI unit previously reported as Artificial Intelligence, generated more revenue than the Starlink-led Connectivity segment, reversing the previous quarter's order, and the group posted an operating profit after losses in each of the four preceding quarters. The quarter also showed what the shift costs: capital spending again ran ahead of revenue, and most of it went into compute.

Japan has successfully launched a spacecraft bound for the moons of Mars, gaining an early advantage over China in the international race to become the first country to return samples from Mars or its satellites.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on October 18 that its H3 Flight No. 10 rocket, carrying the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft, had been transferred from the assembly building to the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture.

SpaceX announced on October 8, 2026, that it would acquire US 800MHz low-band spectrum licenses held by Grain Management, covering up to 14MHz of paired bandwidth. The transaction remains subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

As advances in aerospace technology lower the barriers to launching and building low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, emerging satellite operators worldwide are driving demand for outsourced space solar cells and modules. Supply-chain sources say the trend is creating new opportunities for Taiwan's solar industry beyond SpaceX, which is led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

South Korean space AI solutions provider TelePIX is accelerating the development of high-resolution optical payloads and onboard AI technologies, with plans to launch its next-generation system into space for validation in 2027.

The engineering fusion of SpaceX and Tesla's flagship technologies is making a dramatic showcase through Tesla's next-generation Roadster reveal, held at SpaceX's McGregor, Texas test site on October 15.

TSMC has confirmed that it is in discussions with Elon Musk's Terafab initiative over potential semiconductor manufacturing cooperation, marking the first public acknowledgment of talks between the two sides.

The global race to build low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations is intensifying, but the massive deployment requirements are straining the aerospace supply chain. As AI data centers expand at the same time, the space industry faces shortages of specialized components and critical materials while competing with well-funded AI companies for power-equipment capacity, raising the risk of higher costs and deployment delays for some mega-constellation projects.

As plans for the Terafab project begin to take shape, the emergence of a scaled chipmaking initiative increasingly reflects Elon Musk's broader ambition to push vertical AI integration across his expanding industrial stack.

Amid ongoing shifts in panel market cycles and end-market demand, AUO continues to press forward with its strategic corporate transformation. Marking its 30th anniversary in 2026, the company will host its "30 Years of Excellence, Co-Creating the Future" sports day on October 17. chairman and CEO Paul Peng and newly appointed president David Chang will meet with the media, drawing keen market attention to AUO's next-phase transformation roadmap.

Baso Precision Optics held its latest online earnings call on October 7, during which the company acknowledged short-term pressures on its gross margin, due to ongoing adjustments to its product mix, resulting in higher upfront costs and initial production yields that could still see improvement. Looking ahead to 2027, the company expects generally stable revenue and gross margin, with potential for additional growth depending on the validation of new products or pilot production breakthroughs in the semiconductor and automated optical inspection (AOI) segments.

SK Hynix's dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and Universal Flash Storage (UFS) products have reached orbit aboard a South Korean satellite that successfully established communication with the ground following the country's fifth Nuri rocket launch. The mission opens the way for in-orbit reliability testing as the memory maker explores potential opportunities in the space electronics market. No in-orbit test results for SK Hynix's memory products have been announced.

LG Group is preparing to test five commercial components developed by LG Electronics, LG Innotek, and LG Energy Solution (LGES), including cameras and batteries, aboard a CubeSat carried as a secondary payload on South Korea's fifth Nuri rocket launch. The mission aims to assess whether commercially available components can operate reliably in space.

The excitement around massive orbital infrastructure mainly stems from its tremendous potential in offering compute nodes powered by near-continuous solar energy beyond the spatial limits of terrestrial infrastructure.

Europe's push for sovereign satellite connectivity is moving beyond simply securing access to bandwidth, as Nokia and ICEYE prepare a new low Earth orbit (LEO) system that would let governments own and control the satellites, ground infrastructure and terminals themselves.