Legislators’ first draft of a fiscal 2021 budget for NASA scales back the Trump administration’s requested 12% increase to current spending levels of $22.6 billion, which would moot a 2024 crewed landing on Moon.
NASA hopes to have the Artemis Accords ready for signature by year’s end, according to Mike Gold, NASA’s acting administrator for the agency’s Office of International and Interagency Agreements.
Inmarsat is developing a “smart pipe” satellite communications (satcom) infrastructure for the Boeing 777X that independently allocates bandwidth for multiple, disparate applications.
NASA astronaut and cancer researcher Kate Rubins, the first person to sequence DNA from space, is hopeful for a resurgence in science and technology activities aboard the International Station when she returns to the ISS in October.
Although named Ofek 16, the spacecraft launched early on July 6 represents the 12th acknowledged platform in the Ofek series, with the last being the Ofek 11 in 2016. The Ofek series has previously been described as a light, agile spy satellite with a mass up to 815 lb. (369 kg) and an unclassified resolution of about 19 in. (50 cm).
About 4 min. into its second-stage burn, the Electron rocket “experienced an issue that caused the complete loss of the vehicle and unfortunately the payloads,” Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said.
The flight readiness engine, produced at Blue Origin’s Kent, Washington, is the first of two BE-4s ULA will attach to a Vulcan rocket for configuration checks and testing.
The House Armed Services Committee proposes investing $150 million in space technology development in the chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill.
With its interest in reusable rockets growing, Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center agreed to adjust the launch profile so SpaceX could attempt to recover the Falcon 9 first stage on a drone ship.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo soared over its new home base near Las Cruces, New Mexico, on June 25, completing the second glide flight since relocating from the company’s manufacturing and test hub in Mojave, California.
Kirk Shireman, NASA’s former manager of the International Space Station, is joining Lockheed Martin to head its lunar exploration initiatives, including the development of a Blue Origin-led system to land astronauts on the Moon in 2024.
NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken completed a 6-hr. spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) on June 26, initiating the final chapter in a multiyear upgrade of the solar power storage batteries on the orbiting lab’s 360-ft.-long solar power truss.
NASA is looking into flying astronauts and other personnel aboard commercial suborbital spacecraft such as those in development by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.
