Space company Virgin Orbit is reviewing telemetry data from the first LauncherOne launch vehicle orbital test flight attempt, which was terminated after an anomaly occurred shortly after launch May 25.

Work on SpaceX’s prototype Starship spacecraft has eased up while the company focuses on launching its first people into orbit, says CEO Elon Musk. 

NASA completed a two-day Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the Demo-2 test mission, confirming a launch attempt on May 27 for SpaceX’s first human spaceflight and NASA’s first launch of astronauts on a U.S. system since 2011.

Launch service companies could be given the discretion to decide the optimal launch plan to support the 30 satellites in Tranche 0 of the Space Development Agency’s future military surveillance and communications architecture in low Earth orbit, the agency said May 20.

British satellite launcher firm Skyrora has undertaken a full static fire test of its Skylark-L rocket, the first test of this scale since the UK’s Black Arrow program 50 years ago.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 20 for final preparations ahead of launch next week to test SpaceX’s Crew Dragon system.

Boeing, which was shut out of nearly $1 billion of NASA funding to develop human-class lunar landers, said it does not plan to protest the awards, which went to teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX. 

The U.S. Commerce Department on May 19 released a long-awaited new rule for the export of remote sensing services.