At the close of NASA’s upcoming Artemis I test flight, an uncrewed Orion capsule will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere faster and hotter than any previous human spacecraft, validating the heat shield’s ability to protect astronauts returning from the Moon and eventually Mars.
NASA could be prepared to announce its four Artemis II crewmembers late this year, Chief Astronaut Reid Wiseman told an Aug. 5 pre-mission news briefing from the agency’s Johnson Space Center.
Northrop Grumman will partner with startup Firefly Aerospace to develop new engines for its Antares launch vehicle and a follow-on new medium-lift booster that not only would be used for NASA resupply runs to the International Space Station (ISS), but also for commercial and potential U.S. military missions.
The Space Development Agency (SDA) has issued a call for proposals for a company to demonstrate laser communications from its Tranche 0 Transport Layer to a laser communications-equipped aircraft “as soon as practical.”
Embraer’s urban air mobility spinoff Eve Holding saw cash burn accelerate in the first half of 2022 as it increased research and development (R&D) spending on its electric vertical takeoff and landing air taxi and urban air traffic management program.
China sent a secretive reusable space vehicle into orbit on Aug.4 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, making it the third known mission of such a spacecraft.
The recent launch of a National Reconnaissance Office payload aboard a Rocket Lab Electron in New Zealand and the upcoming launch of another spy satellite from a Virgin LauncherOne in the UK is the “new norm” for the office as it looks to proliferate its architecture, the NRO’s director says.
Blue Canyon Technologies has opened a new cubesat factory in Boulder, Colorado, that will increase its annual production capacity from 50 to 85 satellites.
Xona Space Systems has received an undisclosed investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures to fund development of a private low Earth orbit global navigation satellite system.
The U.S. Air Force will buy SpaceX’s Starlink low Earth orbit satellite internet service to aid airlift operations in Africa and Europe, saying in a justification document that Starlink is the only provider currently able to provide service in Africa and has proven its ability to function in a combat zone.
A Rocket Lab Electron booster delivered a classified U.S. and Australian spacecraft into low Earth orbit on Aug. 4, the second of two missions contracted under a National Reconnaissance Office’s Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket contract.
After months of troubleshooting, NASA and its partners have succeeded in sufficiently unfolding a circular solar array that failed to fully deploy following the Oct. 16, 2021, launch of the Lucy asteroid probe.
Momentus’s Vigoride-3 deployed four additional satellites to low Earth orbit in July as the company works through anomalies discovered shortly after launching the space tug in May.
NASA is on track to complete work on its first Space Launch System rocket and roll the vehicle out to Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B on Aug. 18 ahead of liftoff on the Artemis I flight test.
The acquisitions mean Slingshot will be able to offer satellite operators a better understanding of the growing number of objects on orbit and other threats.
NASA is updating requirements for future private astronaut missions to the International Space Station based on some lessons learned from the pioneering 17-day Axiom Space-1 mission to the orbital science lab flown in April.
The U.S. Space Force wants to know what the space domain awareness software tracking capabilities industry can provide as it looks to phase out multiple old systems at many operating locations that serve the SDA mission.
