Spire Global Wins $28 Million NOAA Contract for Hyperspectral Microwave Sounding

Sòphia High Tech S.r.l., the Italian aerospace and defense manufacturer in which Genenta Science S.p.A. made a strategic investment in 2026, contributed to the manufacture of the Spring Assembly used in the second and third stage separation system of the VEGA-C launcher that lifted off at 03:21 CEST on September 15, 2026 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The VV30 mission carried two European Earth observation satellites built by Thales Alenia Space into a Sun-synchronous orbit: Copernicus Sentinel-3C, the third satellite of the Sentinel-3 mission of the European Union's Copernicus program, and FLEX, the eighth Earth Explorer mission developed under the European Space Agency's FutureEO program. The Spring Assembly, installed in the interstage connecting the Zefiro 40 second stage to the Zefiro 9 third stage, releases stored elastic energy to initiate separation of the exhausted second stage from the third stage, and Sòphia HT has been in serial production of the component since 2018. Genenta, which is evolving into Saentra Forge, a strategic industrial consolidator focused on aerospace, defense, national security and biotechnology, said the component reflects the flight-qualified engineering capability it seeks to back as it builds a listed, long-term Italian platform, according to CEO Pierluigi Paracchi. Sòphia HT CEO Antonio Caraviello said every Spring Assembly delivered for VEGA-C since 2018 must meet the same requirement of an identical mechanical response flight after flight.

HawkEye 360 announced a strategic collaboration with ERA a.s. under which ERA will serve as an international processing partner for automated terrestrial and maritime radar products derived from HawkEye 360's radio frequency data. The partnership combines HawkEye 360's space-based signals intelligence, automated geolocation and advanced RF analytics with ERA's integration and mission-workflow capabilities to give defense and security customers faster access to operationally actionable information. HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini said European defense organizations are seeking faster, more integrated ways to understand increasingly complex operating environments, and that the combination can deliver actionable information more quickly to allied warfighters and defense leaders across Europe. ERA CEO Ondřej Chlost said the cooperation is advancing to a whole new level and pointed to growing worldwide customer interest in advanced passive surveillance systems, particularly in SIGINT, and in integrating solutions already deployed in the field. ERA, a member of the OMNIPOL Group headquartered in Pardubice, Czech Republic, has more than three decades of experience and installations in over 70 countries.