The modest sample of pebbles and soil that NASA’s Osiris-Rex sample return mission will attempt to gather from the asteroid Bennu may hold important clues to how life arose on Earth and perhaps other planetary bodies.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is supporting the Space Development Agency by building a hardware and software testbed for optical communications to enable interoperability between different satellites.
NASA has selected Intuitive Machines to launch and deliver a drill and mass spectrometer payload to the Moon by December 2022 to seek out seek out and attempt to harvest subsurface water ice at the lunar south pole for the first time.
There is promising new science on the horizon as NASA’s nimble Osiris-Rex sample return spacecraft prepares for a daring brief encounter on Oct. 20 with its distant target, the primitive asteroid Bennu.
The lack of an appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed into law by the president is forcing the U.S. Space Force to slow down some of its work.
India’s space agency has confirmed expectations that it will resume launches in November, saying it was catching up on work after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Japanese space researchers are studying concepts for a reusable orbiter with a mass of up to 5 metric tons for deployment by the Epsilon light space launcher.
The Streamlined Launch and Reentry Licensing Requirements final rule allows commercial space operators to acquire a single license to conduct multiple launches from multiple sites.
Introduced in April, the “Honey, I shrunk the NASA payload” global crowdsourcing competition is moving on to “Honey, I Built the NASA Payload, The Sequel.”
Fourteen U.S. companies are to receive an estimated $370 million in NASA “Tipping Point” agreements intended to advance technologies needed to achieve a sustained human presence on the Moon during the 2020s and support the human exploration of Mars thereafter.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) hopes to begin developing an upgrade for the H3 medium space launcher in 2022, only a year after the first flight, with the aim of driving payload up and unit costs down.
Both companies will serve as prime contractors for the definition phase of the European Large Logistics Lander, supporting NASA's Artemis human lunar missions.
The first countries to sign bilateral Artemis Accords agreements with the U.S. are Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.
Stockholm is planning to make investments in the planned launch site, near Kiruna in the north of the country, that would enable smallsat launch as early as 2022.
Chinese engineers have designed and tested equipment for aerial recovery of space launcher main engines, which they regard as offering advantages over powered descent by fully reusable first stages.
Rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts have been living aboard the orbital outpost for 20 years. Here are some other numbers behind the milestone.
The reserve could support perhaps 1,100 lunar personnel living and working permanently in the cislunar realm to grow a future $3 trillion annual space economy, ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno says.
