Lawmakers draw battle lines on defense budget; FAA creates rulemaking committee for micro UAVs; Foreign Military Sales process remains slow; Culberson makes another attempt to allow the NASA administrator to serve 10 years.
Record numbers of U.S. men and women — just more than 18,300 — would like to pursue careers as NASA astronauts, according to a tally of applicants who made the Feb. 18 deadline to seek perhaps eight to 14 openings early next year.
European officials acknowledge the competitive threat a reflyable Falcon 9 may pose, they seem less interested in reusable launchers than in mimicking a more mundane aspect of the SpaceX business model—volume production of a common engine.
The new SS2 will begin captive carriage flight tests beneath the company’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft later this year, leading to glide flights and later powered flights using the new motor.
NASA’s evolving, two-phase Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) has an added potential to enhance a range of U.S. human exploration, planetary science and commercial space objectives through the possible addition of investigations, an agency-sponsored assessment says.
The initial payloads on the first launch of the heavy-lift Space Launch System will be relatively small CubeSats, but the results could be huge, heralding a day when swarms of minuscule satellites ride piggyback deep into the Solar System for missions now conducted by billion-dollar, custom-built spacecraft.
The U.S. Air Force will need help from Congress to pursue its next-generation launch system plan, but Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) continues pressure against the use of RussianRD-180 rocket engines.
The Indian space industry is aiming to correct a chronic criticism-—that it lacks the heavy-launch vehicles necessary to compete on the international commercial space launch market.
Commercial capacity in lower Earth Orbit is booming, but it’s unclear what payloads will use all that’s being built up by companies such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance (ULA), Blue Origin, Arianespace, Energia, China Great Wall and India’s Antrix.
European planners are looking beyond the next-generation Ariane 6 to a completely new LOX/Methane engine that would dramatically lower production costs, with or without reusability.
Cargo deliveries to the International Space Station with the SpaceX Dragon capsule will have the highest price of the three private vehicles chosen for the second round of Commercial Resupply Services work, but NASA has high confidence of its chances for success.
By specifying the months this year in which the first flights of Long March 5 and 7 are due, CASC shows greater confidence in the development schedules for the rockets, both of which are running years late.
The burgeoning space economy needs government regulation before it spins out of control, a young conservative House Republican congressman urged space-industry representatives Feb. 2.
Demand for mass-produced smallsats leads Clyde Space to expand its U.K. operations and establish a subsidiary in the U.S., where the defense market beckons.
Two small satellites developed by engineering students from in-state rivals Texas A&M and the University of Texas were deployed by astronauts aboard the International Space Station on Jan. 29.
The Arizona senator accuses United Launch Alliance of “manipulative extortion” on RD-180 engines; cargo carriers fight FAA fuel tank AD; NASA ponders how to use funding windfall; U.S. nuclear weapons seem here to stay.
