Responding to U.S. advances in in-space manufacturing, Airbus has been selected to study an orbital factory and potential demonstrator mission to establish a European capability to manufacture and assemble satellites in orbit.

Showing signs of its 30-plus years in Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope resumed science operations late March 11, four days after slipping into safe mode due to a software error detected within the observatory’s main computer.

China successfully launched its new Long March 7A heavy rocket for the first time at 1:51 am local time on March 12 from the Wenchang launch site on Hainan island. 

In another step in their growing space partnership, Russia and China have agreed to cooperate on an international lunar research station, potentially similar to the U.S. led-Artemis program’s Gateway project.

Scientists say they are pleased with the initial performance of SuperCam, a rock-vaporizing collection of lasers, high-tech cameras, spectrographs and microphones aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars 2020 rover.

NASA plans to try again on March 18 to fire up the four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines on the Space Launch System core stage for a critical integrated test ahead of the booster’s debut flight in late 2021 or early 2022.

Nanoracks has proclaimed its benchmark Bishop airlock, which was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in December, “open for business” and ready to commercially support science experiments, spacewalks and equipment transfers on the exterior of the orbiting science lab.

NASA has contracted with Axiom Space to acquire a seat aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-18 for a NASA astronaut to launch to the orbiting science lab on April 9.