Greetings, it's Bruce Einhorn in Princeton. Amazon's buying satellite operator Globalstar in a deal to narrow the gap with Starlink. But first...

Three things you need to know today:

SpaceX deal for EchoStar will save CEO's heirs $3 billion.
NASA's lunar economy is underway (video).
Telesat's rebuild gets boost from Canada's defense war chest.

A new D2D player

The $11.6 billion acquisition of Globalstar is upending the satellite industry, as Jeff Bezos & Co. push to make Amazon Leo the main alternative to SpaceX's Starlink ahead of its blockbuster IPO.

Bloomberg reported back in October that Elon Musk's company had held early talks about purchasing GlobalStar. A deal would've added the satellite operator's wireless spectrum to what SpaceX agreed in September to buy from EchoStar for about $17 billion.

As the industry laggard, though, Amazon needs a deal more. The company recently announced it has launched more than 200 satellites "and has another 200+ stacked and ready for launch." Unfortunately, that leaves Amazon well behind its target set by the Federal Communications Commission for about 1,600 satellites by July.

Also, as Desjardins Capital Markets analysts pointed out earlier this month on a possible Amazon/Globalstar deal, the e-commerce giant's purchase would likely face fewer antitrust and spectrum-concentration concerns than a SpaceX-Globalstar deal.

Amazon's had a tricky relationship with the regulator lately. The company got a dressing down from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last month after the company objected to SpaceX plans to deploy more satellites.

However, Carr on Tuesday spoke positively about the acquisition in an interview with CNBC.

With the Globalstar purchase, Amazon said it plans on entering the direct-to-device market, a business just getting started that promises to use satellites instead of cell towers for voice, text and data, freeing users from the tyranny of dead zones.

Amazon won't be a standalone carrier with Globalstar's spectrum, "but it's adequate for delivering basic services such as voice and texting, particularly in less densely populated areas," Bloomberg Intelligence senior industry analyst John Butler wrote in a report published on Wednesday. Amazon would likely look to build a more powerful network of satellites, he added.

D2D satellites "are among the most technologically demanding spacecraft you can build," according to Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, since operators need a lot of power to provide a service similar to that of terrestrial-based towers.

That's something Globalstar couldn't hope to do on its own, he added. "Having the backing of Amazon turbocharges their ability to provide direct-to-cell service in a way that might have been too expensive otherwise," he said.

Amazon's news therefore spooked investors in AST SpaceMobile, the Texas-based company that until now has benefited from being the main alternative to Starlink in that nascent business. AST's shares sank nearly 11% on Tuesday.

Amazon said it won't begin D2D service till 2028, so AST still has time before facing that additional competition. But AST has faced challenges getting its satellites into orbit.

A big test is coming soon, with reports that AST will launch its next satellite - the first to go to orbit on a New Glenn rocket from Bezos' Blue Origin - later this week. -- Bruce Einhorn with Loren Grush

Of lunar flybys and landings

While the Artemis II mission's successful journey is great publicity for NASA, China may still win the space race.

"Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China's projected timeline to the Moon's surface," Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator during the first Trump administration, said at a Senate hearing in September.

Some things have changed since then: Jared Isaacman is now NASA administrator and work on the Gateway lunar orbiter was paused last month. But NASA's complicated architecture for a moon landing remains the same.

At a conference in Washington in March, Bridenstine told me he hadn't changed his mind. His office last week responded to an interview request with a referral to his September comments.

NASA's counting on SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop lunar landers, but both companies must overcome significant engineering hurdles. The agency's Office of Inspector General has said that more delays are likely for SpaceX's Starship, the rocket that the company is also developing into a lunar lander.

Jonathan McDowell - a former Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist who's now affiliated with Durham University's Space Research Centre - recently told Bloomberg that while China is behind in the human lunar program race, its plans are "less likely to be derailed by changes in political support."

On the same day as the Artemis II crew's return, Chinese state media published news that the China Manned Space Agency had safely transported the nation's next lunar probe, the Chang'e-7, to its launch site in southern Hainan province, with takeoff slated for later this year.

The robotic mission, after Chang'e-6's trip to the moon's far side in 2024, is part of a program designed to send Chinese astronauts to the moon for the first time by 2030.

Meanwhile, the biggest success in years for the US didn't get much of a response in China.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Bloomberg Beijing bureau, "China has always advocated that countries strengthen international cooperation, peacefully explore and utilize outer space for the benefit of humanity."

The ministry threw in a dig at President Donald Trump's executive order in December titled "Ensuring American Space Superiority."

"We have no intention" of participating in a space race with any country or "seeking so-called 'space superiority,'" the Chinese spokesperson said. -- Bruce Einhorn

Lockheed looks at the Artemis heat shield

NASA and its partners are sifting through data after the Artemis II crew splashed down on Earth, including discoloration of the heat shield on the Lockheed Martin-built Orion Crew Capsule.

After the four crew members made it home safely, Kirk Shireman, head of human space flight at Lockheed Martin, joined Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech" and said the heat shield performed exceptionally and most of the more than 12 million parts performed as intended.

What we're reading

Ukraine launched rockets into space during the war with Russia, MP says: Ukrainska Pravda.

Jerry Moran, key Senate appropriator, rejects proposed NASA cuts: SpaceNews.

ESA spent €82 million to launch Sentinel-1D on Ariane 6: European Spaceflight.

In our orbit

April 15-16: Final days of Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

April 15-22: Meeting in Vienna of the legal subcommittee of the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

April 21: NASA to unveil the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Talk to us

Please send us ideas, tips and questions to

[email protected]. As always, you can reach Bloomberg's global business of space editor, Eric Johnson, at [email protected] (or via Signal). If you don't receive this newsletter, you should sign up here.

Amazon's $11 Billion Bid to Rival SpaceX's Starlink