Kratos Defense & Security Solutions will acquire CPI ASC Signal Division from Communications & Power Industries for $35 million in cash, in a deal that further guarantees the U.S. government at least two major providers of key satellite communications technology.
DARPA has awarded Blue Canyon Technologies a $14.2 million contract to provide commercial satellite buses for the Blackjack program to demonstrate a military constellation of autonomous satellites in low Earth orbit connected by a high-speed network.
Fresh off a major milestone in a difficult 10-year effort by NASA to establish a U.S. commercial capability to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), Kathy Lueders has taken over leadership of an accelerated effort by the agency to return human explorers to the Moon’s surface in 2024.
After an 11-week hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rocket Lab resumed launch operations on June 13 by successfully launching a payload of small satellites for NASA, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the University of New South Wales Canberra Space into low Earth orbit.
Representatives from the three commercial Human Lander System developers recently chosen by NASA to shuttle future astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface are expressing confidence that their efforts can help the agency achieve the White House goal of returning to the Moon with astronauts in 2024 and establishing a sustainable presence.
Japanese telecommunications operator SoftBank remains committed to AeroVironment’s high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS) unmanned aircraft, the latter’s top executive said.
NASA has awarded Astrobotic a $199.5 million contract to deliver the Volatiles Investigation Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s south pole in 2023, where it will search for water ice deposits that could be useful to future astronauts.
Expectations for a March 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are fading, agency officials told a June 10 virtual meeting of the National Academies of Sciences’ Space Studies Board (SSB).
NASA’s Perseverance Mars 2020 rover will experience a three-day delay to its planned mid-July launch due to an issue with ground equipment at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch site.
The director of the White House National Space Council believes NASA’s push to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024 is helping the agency significantly streamline its decision-making, though there’s more to do.
A more powerful version of China’s Long March 11 solid-propellant space launcher will fly in 2022, state manufacturer Casc has told government news agency Xinhua.
Veteran astronaut Kate Rubin’s trip will ensure a U.S. presence on the International Space Station while NASA strives to complete the certifications of a second commercial crew launch provider.
Four days after launching astronauts for a flight test of its commercial space taxi, SpaceX fired off another Falcon 9 rocket to resume building out its Starlink satellite network for high-speed internet service.
The U.S. arm of Japanese satellite servicing startup Astroscale is expanding into geostationary orbit by acquiring the assets of Israeli company Effective Space Solutions.
Arnold Aldrich, a 35-year NASA executive whose guidance touched U.S. human space exploration from Mercury through the space shuttle, died on May 28 in a Virginia hospital following a brief battle with cancer.
Known as the “impact origin of life hypothesis,” this process may have occurred elsewhere in the inner Solar System, including Mars and perhaps other planetary systems.
“It’s truly a critical moment in the development of the space economy and a new era of private human spaceflight,” NASDAQ’s president and CEO said just before the astronauts rang the bell in the station’s U.S. segment.
