Waypoints, Week of 27 Oct to 2 Nov 2026: Orbital warfare, hypersonics, Galileo G2, UK offsets

UK MoD puts £15M into Astroscale's Project LEDA, opening a budgeted line for orbital warfare

Astroscale's UK subsidiary announced on 28 October that it had won a £15 million (€17.9 million) Ministry of Defence contract for Project LEDA, with BAE Systems and Open Cosmos as key partners. A regulatory filing shows the contract was signed on 29 September, a month before the public announcement. The MoD framed LEDA as a programme that would examine how spacecraft 'might be employed to counter RPO threats', meaning rendezvous and proximity operations. The spending sits inside the Defence Investment Plan's £3.2 billion allocation for space through 2030, and lands the same week Shield Space launched a UK Space Superiority Coalition targeting the same mission set. For ventures: the UK has now put a budget line against offensive and defensive on-orbit manoeuvre. Startups in RPO software, electric propulsion, space-domain awareness and secure C2 should treat LEDA, Orpheus and the Shield Space coalition as a single addressable pipeline through 2030, not three separate ones.

Source: Astroscale Awarded £15M MOD Contract as UK Government Strengthens Focus on Resilience in Space, European Spaceflight

Hypersonica closes €100M Series B at Lightspeed and General Catalyst to field a sovereign European deep-strike missile by 2029

British-German defence company Hypersonica announced on 2 November a €100 million Series B, co-led by Lightspeed and General Catalyst, with Plural and 201 Ventures following on. Total funding is now around €126 million including a €2.5 million seed and a €23.3M Series A. The company, founded in 2023 and headquartered near Munich with a London subsidiary, is building ITAR-free hypersonic deep-strike systems and targets fielding by 2029. The investment case rests on real demand: the UK's Defence Investment Plan allocates £770 million over four years for a joint UK-German programme under the Trinity House Agreement, and Germany and Norway are co-funders of the EU HYDEF European hypersonic interceptor. For founders: generalist US growth funds are now writing €100M-plus cheques into European kinetic defence, not just dual-use software. The policy budgets are visible, the exit path (government contract or acquisition by a prime) is credible, and the 'ITAR-free' framing is now a repeatable fundraising wedge.

Source: Hypersonica raises €100 million to accelerate development of European hypersonic deep-strike systems, Defence Industry Europe

ESA extends Galileo G2 to 16 satellites with Thales Alenia Space and Airbus, flagging European security and defence as a driver

On 27 October, ESA confirmed it had extended ongoing contracts to build four additional Galileo Second Generation (G2) satellites, bringing the fleet to 16. The contracts went to Thales Alenia Space in Italy and Airbus Defence and Space in Germany, each already building six G2 satellites since 2021, with the new deals signed on 23 October in Rome and 26 October in Ottobrunn. The four additional satellites are scheduled for delivery in 2031, with launch to follow right after, and flight testing of the first G2 satellites is planned for 2027 ahead of a first G2 launch in 2028. ESA explicitly tied the procurement to augmenting navigation capabilities for European security and defence. For ventures: Galileo G2 is now a confirmed, funded upstream demand signal through 2031. Startups in GNSS anti-jam and anti-spoof, authenticated PNT, user-segment chipsets and resilient timing have a visible procurement horizon, including the parallel NAVISP work ESA signed with Norwegian firms on 27 October.

Source: ESA procures four new Galileo Second Generation satellites, European Space Agency