Morning Drive · Tuesday, October 13, 2026

SCRIPT

Here's the Space News Morning Drive for Tuesday, October thirteenth. Austin opened the day with a big funding round that runs all the way to the Moon, Dragon is already on its way to the space station, and counter-drone money keeps flowing. Let's go.

We'll open with the Texas Space Ledger. Austin's Icon announced this morning that it raised two hundred million dollars in a Series D co-led by Baillie Gifford and funds managed by BlackRock, with Capital Factory, Overmatch, Tiger Global, and others joining. The Austin American-Statesman reports the money will go to manufacturing and deploying Titan, Icon's new multistory robotic construction system, and to scaling up hiring. Icon says it has built more than two hundred seventy homes and structures, and it's on pace to quadruple revenue this year. The Real Deal notes Icon's space and defense division, Icon Prime, has been awarded more than three hundred seventy million dollars in government contracts, including a fifty-seven million dollar NASA contract to develop construction systems that use lunar soil.

That leads right into Moon Base Watch. There's no new NASA announcement since last week's word that the first Moon Base element is targeted for December, but MIT Technology Review published a deep look yesterday at what building on the Moon will actually take. NASA's Moon Base program manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, told the magazine the base could eventually cover hundreds of square miles, and that in the first years the buildup will be, in his words, pretty much ninety-nine percent robotic.

Now to the launch board, and this morning's big one. NASA's thirty-fifth SpaceX resupply mission lifted off at five thirty-three A M Central from Cape Canaveral. NASA says Dragon is carrying more than sixty-three hundred pounds of supplies and science, including the final pair of station roll-out solar arrays, hardware for making artificial retinas in microgravity, three-D heart tissue models, and brain organoids for research on diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Spaceflight Now reports the booster was flying for the eighth time and landed back at the Cape, and Dragon will also bring home the failed Canadarm two joint that was pulled during a June spacewalk. Docking is set for Thursday at about ten A M Central.

And last night, right on our heads-up from the Ride Home, SpaceX launched Starlink Group fifteen dash twenty-five from Vandenberg at about seven twenty-eight P M Central. SpaceX says Falcon nine carried twenty-seven Starlink V two Mini satellites, and the booster landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You.

On defense and A I at the edge, RTX's Raytheon announced this morning that it won seven hundred twenty-nine million dollars in contracts to deliver key pieces of its counter-drone system, called LIDS, to the U S Army, Qatar, and Jordan. The award covers Raytheon's Ku-band radar sensor and its Coyote interceptors, and Raytheon says these are the first international sales of both. The company says it's investing to expand Coyote production, with faster launch times and more speed and range.

Staying in Central Texas defense manufacturing, Aeon Industrial said it was named to the inaugural Austin Deep Tech Fifty, the list organized by Overmatch Ventures with seven venture firms. In its release, Aeon says it builds missile systems, interceptors, and defense subsystems, and that it's expanding production at a new one hundred forty thousand square foot plant in Cedar Park, bringing propulsion, fuzing, software, and final assembly under one roof.

On the VORAGO deal itself, the trade press is still circulating it. Chip Dispatch posted a fresh write-up this morning, noting that terms weren't disclosed and Microchip hasn't published revenue targets or capacity figures for the acquired business, and that customers should expect clarification on product roadmaps and qualification plans as the integration moves along.

On mental health, a new study in Nature Human Behaviour followed nearly twenty-two thousand Swedish twins from age nine into young adulthood. News Medical reports that heavy interactive screen use as a teen, more than six hours a day, was linked to higher anxiety and depression later on, but those links got much weaker when researchers compared twins within the same family, which suggests shared family factors explain a good part of it.

Here's what to watch today. Keep an eye on Dragon as it chases the station, with NASA's docking coverage starting Thursday around eight fifteen A M Central. Watch for any hiring or Texas site news from Icon now that the money is in. And in agriculture, Texas A and M has a Beef Sustainability Field Day on Friday in Decatur, featuring regenerative grazing and land restoration.

That's the Space News Morning Drive. Thanks for listening.