Space

China’s human-spaceflight organization plans to launch the first element of its three-module space station in 2018.

After years of counting on U.S. government business, United Launch Alliance is paying more attention to developments in the global commercial satellite sector.

The U.S. ban on space cooperation with China is “temporary” and will not necessarily block future cooperation, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says.

Virgin Galactic confirms that it has reverted to an improved form of the original rubber-based fuel for powering the company’s sub-orbital SpaceShipTwo.

Israeli satellite maker and subsidiary aim to offer data products collected from UAVs and ground-based sensors in addition to satellites.

The Google Lunar X-Prize was set to expire at the end of this year unless at least one of the competitors contracted for a launch first.

U.S. experts on Russian actions in Syria; FAA prepares big penalty for wayward UAV; over-cost defense programs face fines.

U.S. space exploration planners say the next big piece of human hardware needed on the road to Mars is a modular habitat that could be stationed near the Moon and visited by early manned Orion capsule missions.

NASA is studying a modular habitat that could be stationed near the Moon.

Scientists, engineers and human spaceflight visionaries will gather in Jerusalem on Oct. 12 to ponder where to go in the Solar System after the International Space Station, how to get there and who will make the trip.

Sierra Nevada Space Systems will deliver its Dream Chaser engineering test article to NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California around year’s end and plans to resume atmospheric drop testing in the first quarter of 2016.

Their use marks a major expansion in the U.S. Air Force’s ability to spy on other satellites.

California, in particular, is sure to feel a strong impact from a new regulation lowering the permissible level of ozone ppb. Satellites can help.

An international court ordered the state-owned satellite company to pay damages of $672 million to Devas Multimedia.

Once a monopoly, ULA is now fighting for engines to compete against upstart SpaceX.

NASA is moving forward in the real world with studies of concepts for an ascent vehicle to lift humans from the surface of the red planet.

After being the monopoly rocket supplier to the U.S. government for national security launches for nearly 10 years, the tables have turned for United Launch Alliance.

Though the bulk of ULA’s work is still with the U.S. government and will remain so for years to come, CEO Tory Bruno is posturing the company to be more competitive in the commercial market.

A paradigm shift is underway, whereby historical players from the old military-industrial complex are bound to become marginalized and lose out to the new players of the digital economy.

Protecting planets in the search for life, and actually searching for it with humans, probably won’t mix.

NASA has a hard sell at the International Astronautical Congress with its focus on Mars.

The Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) will be very different from the ascent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module, the only craft ever to carry humans off the surface of another planetary body.

Given the success of the five-nation ISS partnership, the new director-general of the European Space Agency is hopeful any successor to the orbiting outpost will be founded on international cooperation. To this end, he has proposed a free-flying science lab that would continue ISS micro-gravity research in low Earth orbit while advancing technologies for orbital-debris mitigation. He has also floated a so-called “Moon Village” mission on the dark side of the lunar surface, offering the potential to further research and technology development in a low-gravity environment using humans, robots, or both.

Pentagon postures for a reality where satellites are threatened or even attacked.

Finding adds urgency to space agency’s quest to find life on other planets.