CommStar Space

Recognized under Tier 7 — Interplanetary Communications, CommStar Space Communications is a small U.K.-registered company that announced plans in 2020 to develop CommStar-1, a hybrid radio-frequency and optical relay satellite positioned near the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange point, roughly 41,600 miles from the Moon, to provide always-on data and navigation services to lunar surface and orbital missions. The company entered a letter of intent with Thales Alenia Space for the spacecraft's design, but its original 2023 launch target has passed without a confirmed deployment, and the company remains listed as small and unfunded as of 2025 company filings. CommStar's proposed L1 relay concept illustrates a category of infrastructure — a fixed communications and navigation anchor point between Earth and the Moon — that lunar and eventually Mars-bound programs will need, even as CommStar's own progress toward delivering it remains unverified.