A day after delivering a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite into orbit from California, SpaceX returned its attention to building its Starlink broadband communications network with a midafternoon Feb. 3 launch of another Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center.
Engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore have begun a three-month process to align the 18 segments of the James Webb Space Telescope primary mirror, fine-turning its shape so that it operates as a unified, 21-ft.-dia. mirror, NASA said on Feb. 3.
An entrepreneur with a background in space companies and an aerospace-focused investment group are partnering to launch a new company, O-G, that aims to provide microgravity and low Earth orbit (LEO) insertion services.
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover and its companion Ingenuity drone helicopter are turning their focus to the remnants of a stream delta that was perhaps the site of a wet, habitable environment more than 3.5 billion years ago.
The startup, which is planning to perform its first launch from Space Hub Sutherland on the Scottish mainland later this year, is the first UK-based launch provider to disclose that it has applied for such a license.
The International Space Station (ISS) partnership gave its formal blessing for the four-member Axiom-1 (Ax-1) crew to visit the orbital outpost, with launch aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule now slated for March 30, a day earlier than previously planned.
NASA is retargeting the rollout of its first Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule for a tanking test at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B to mid-March, a month later than planned.
A month after announcing the Biden administration’s support to extend International Space Station operations from 2024 to 2030, NASA has provided a congressionally required update of its transition strategy.
Russia’s Glavkosmos, the commercial arm of space agency Roscosmos, signed an agreement with Bangladesh Satellite Co. Ltd. on Feb. 2 to build and launch Bangladesh’s first Earth observation system.
Isotropic Systems simultaneously connected a multilink satellite terminal to satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) and geostationary orbit during trials at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.
The National Reconnaissance Office and SpaceX on Feb. 2 plan to launch the first Falcon 9 carrying an NRO payload procured under the National Security Space Launch program, and the first time a booster will be reused for another NRO mission.
After waiting out poor weather and a wayward cruise ship in Florida, SpaceX on Jan. 31 launched the newest member of Italy’s synthetic aperture radar Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation network, completing the fourth of 52 missions SpaceX plans this year.
Crowdsourcing platform HeroX is again working with NASA through a just-announced competition aimed at tackling another technical challenge to enable a two- to three-year roundtrip human expedition to Mars.
Under a joint project to create an optical internet service connecting low-orbiting satellites with high-flying unmanned aircraft, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Sony researchers have demonstrated high-speed, large-capacity communications in a low-quality, error-prone environment.
Masten Space Systems is touting progress with its Nighttime Integrated Thermal and Electricity system, designed as a low-cost/low-mass method for keeping electronics and payloads on commercial lunar landers alive during nights on the Moon.
Now that NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover team has cleared a pebble obstruction from its sample collection mechanism, the robot geologist is ready to resume drilling into selected rocks that may host evidence of past microbial life on the red planet.
Twelve-year-old Satellogic, an Earth observation satellite systems and analytics company, became publicly traded in late January after the reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), as well as an 11th-hour investment boost via former Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
Roscosmos plans to start testing the new Angara A5M and Soyuz-5 rockets as well as the Oryol spaceship, all of which are intended to replace legacy Soviet hardware still in operation.
Space debris removal startup Astroscale has halted an autonomous capture demonstration in low Earth orbit after detecting anomalous spacecraft conditions.
