Washington governor sets up space council to boost business ventures targeting the final frontier. by Alan Boyle on Sep 28, 2026 at 11:15 pm Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has created a public-private council to elevate the Evergreen State's profile as regional clusters compete for primacy in America's space industry. The 23-member Washington Space Council was introduced tonight at the Museum of Flight during a kickoff event for Seattle Space Week, a celebration organized by Space Northwest. "The council will help keep us competitive by comparing Washington with other leading states in the industry and identifying ways we can continue to improve and compete," Ferguson said. Washington state already ranks as one of the nation's space industry hotspots. "We're proud to have a cluster of more than 90 space companies employing more than 13,000 workers, generating over $4 billion in annual economic activity and $1.6 billion in annual payroll," Ferguson said. But Andy Lapsa, co-founder and CEO of Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space, told tonight's crowd that several other regions are competing with the Pacific Northwest for space-related investments. "States like Florida and Texas and Colorado want this industry, and they want it bad," he said. "They compete for it every day. Washington has every advantage it needs to lead them all, and the window to use those advantages is open right now." Boeing has historically been the state's leading venture in aerospace, but when you focus on ventures that concentrate strictly on space, Blue Origin is high on the list. Seattle is particularly strong in the satellite sector: More than half of the world's satellites are built in the Seattle area, thanks to SpaceX's Starlink facilities in Redmond and Woodinville, plus Amazon Leo's factory in Kirkland, BlackSky's production plant in Tukwila and Xplore's operation in Bellevue. Gravitics, Interlune, Portal Space Systems, Starcloud and Starfish Space are among other space ventures represented on the Washington Space Council. The list also includes elected officials, union leaders, educators and investors, plus representatives from space-related tech companies and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ferguson said the council will "identify barriers for the industry and find opportunities for growth." "That includes, by the way, workforce development, infrastructure and much more," he said. "And the council will look for ways we might be able to develop Washington-based commercial launch capabilities. That would be a very exciting addition to what we're doing right here in Washington." Ferguson brought a member of the audience, 10-year-old Sebastian Yu, to the stage when he signed the executive order that officially created the council. After the signing, the governor handed the pen to Yu. "Your assignment, Sebastian, is that when we do that first launch, you have to save this pen and bring it with you to the first launch," Ferguson said. "Take care of this pen, OK? I'm going to expect to see it again someday." Notes from the kickoff: * Space Northwest presented three awards to recognize contributions to the region's space industry. The Shooting Star award for municipal support went to the city of Kent, Wash. Portal Space Systems won the Rising Star award for emerging space companies, and SpaceX won the North Star Award for large space companies. * Kent Mayor Dana Ralph noted that her city's connection to the space industry goes back to Boeing's work on the lunar rovers for NASA's Apollo moon missions in the 1970s, while acknowledging that Kent can't rest on its laurels. "Our job is to make it possible for companies to build and grow and hire. That means reinvesting in the basics: roads, great mobility, water, sewer, plentiful and easily accessible energy and industrial land," she said. * Mehran Mesbahi, professor and chair of the University of Washington's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, highlighted efforts to boost careers in the space industry. "We have Husky Satellite Lab, a group of energized students at UW, and we're going to create a certificate program around space systems going forward," he said. Seattle Space Week continues on Tuesday with the Space Northwest Symposium at the Federal Way Performing Arts & Event Center.

Startups look to add electronic-threat detection to maneuverable spacecraft. August 25, 2026 Two of TFX's Portfolio Companies, Portal Space Systems and Rebel Space, are teaming up to put spectrum monitoring technology aboard Portal's vehicles, extending a capability now used on the ground into orbit. The companies are exploring several approaches that would allow Portal spacecraft to detect and characterize interference and other electronic threats in their immediate surroundings, executives from the two startups told SpaceNews. One option is a dedicated Rebel payload. Another would integrate the technology as a standard onboard function, giving Portal spacecraft continuing awareness of the radio-frequency environment while carrying out other missions. The effort comes as government agencies and commercial satellite operators pay closer attention to the increasingly congested electromagnetic environment in space, where communications links can be disrupted by unintentional interference or deliberate jamming. Rebel provides spectrum intelligence from the ground by connecting its hardware and software to antennas operated by independent satellite teleport companies. Its systems analyze the RF signals received by those antennas to identify and characterize interference and jamming, and can help attribute or potentially geolocate their source. Carrie Marshall, Rebel's chief executive, said the company now wants to move that sensing and analysis closer to the spacecraft itself. That could give satellite operators a more immediate picture of what is affecting a communications link rather than relying solely on observations from ground stations. For military spacecraft operating in a contested environment, onboard monitoring could also help identify attempted jamming, suspicious commands or other unusual electromagnetic activity. Marshall said one approach under discussion is a "spectrum warfare" payload hosted by Portal. Such a system could provide not only analytics but the ability to "respond in kind or actively defend or mitigate" activity affecting the spacecraft. The companies are also considering embedding Rebel's technology more broadly across Portal's spacecraft rather than treating it as a standalone payload. Portal's chief executive Jeff Thornburg said the company is interested in an "ingrained capability to understand the EW environment around the spacecraft." That approach could be useful for Portal's spacecraft, which are being designed to maneuver more extensively than traditional satellites. A vehicle moving toward another spacecraft or into a different orbital region may need to understand the local RF environment without waiting for ground-based sensors to provide that picture, Thornburg said. The capability could also support space domain awareness, the military term for detecting and understanding objects and activity in orbit, by adding information about electromagnetic activity to optical and other forms of tracking. The companies are looking to begin integration work on the ground. "The next step for Carrie and me is really to marry her hardware and software with our system and test it in our hardware-in-the-loop system on the ground before the first launch, which would probably be no earlier than 2027," Thornburg said. Portal launched its first hardware in March aboard SpaceX's Transporter-16 mission, flying a small technology-demonstration payload that tested the flight computer, avionics and software intended for its spacecraft family. Its next milestone is the first flight of Starburst, Portal's roughly 300-kilogram maneuverable spacecraft, scheduled to launch in October aboard SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission to a mid-inclination orbit. The inaugural flight is intended primarily to validate the Starburst design. It will also carry rendezvous-and-proximity-operations cameras supplied by TRL11 and a superconducting magnet technology payload from Zenno Astronautics. Starburst will also be the first orbital deployment of Atomic-6's Space Armor, a lightweight composite tile system designed to protect spacecraft from micrometeoroids and orbital debris.

Portal Space plans first launch of transorbital Supernova spacecraft in 2028. Thursday, August 20th, 2026 Portal Space Systems on Thursday said it has contacted with SpaceX [SPCX] to launch the company's Supernova spacecraft in mid-2028, which will feature Portal's FLARE solar thermal power propulsion system. Portal acquired the entire Falcon 9 launch mission, an unusual move by a spacecraft manufacturer, giving it full control of its Montus Via Sol mission. The first launch of its Starburst satellite is slated for October on a SpaceX rocket. Both spacecraft types are built to be highly maneuverable and... Not a subscriber or registered user yet? Please contact us at [email protected] or call us at 888-707-5814 (Monday - Thursday 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. and Friday 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. ET.), to start a free trial, get pricing information, order a reprint, or post an article link on your website.