Space

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

The contracts mark kickoff of two-phase approach to moving from the government-owned ISS to a public-private outpost in low Earth orbit.

Initially planned for Nov. 30, the excursion was delayed two days so that NASA could assess a possible orbital debris concern.

As a reusable booster, Neutron is designed to carry 8 tons into low Earth orbit.

The data will assist with understanding how spaceflight affects human physical and mental health.

Spacecraft will collide with asteroid in hopes of learning how to deflect threats to Earth.

Vice President Kamala Harris is to kick off the first National Space Council meeting under the Biden administration.

The walk was delayed earlier this week to allow for assessments of a possible orbital debris threat.

NASA did not link the debris to a mid-November Russian anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test.

NASA management disagrees with a conclusion reached by the agency’s inspector general (IG) in a report issued Nov. 30.

Airbus has already started using its latest-generation Pleiades Neo Earth-observation satellites.

Efforts to determine the root cause of the problem have been underway since Nov. 22.

NASA-led anomaly investigation found cause of vibration throughout James Webb Space Telescope.

Prichal provides the Russian segment of the ISS with five new parking spots for space vehicles.

“This latest round of funding will dramatically accelerate our ability to make on-orbit servicing routine by 2030,” Astroscale founder and CEO Nobu Okada said.

Twenty-three years after the launch of the first module for the International Space Station in 1998, Russia is preparing to complete the construction of its segment with the launch of its last element—the Prichal Node Module.

DART separated from its Falcon 9 second stage just less than 56 min. after launching, a milestone followed by signal acquisition by the APL mission operations center 70 min. after liftoff.

The eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to venture into space, will fly on the Blue Origin suborbital spacecraft named after her father, the company said on Nov. 23.

Lockheed Martin on Nov. 23 announced the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (NGG) Block 0 program passed its system-level critical design review, keeping pace for the first launch in 2025.

Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the $11 billion, U.S.-led successor to the Hubble observatory, is being delayed at least four days to no earlier than Dec. 22 to allow time for additional analysis following a mishap during processing the telescope for launch in French Guiana.

DART is the first attempt to demonstrate a kinetic impact strategy for diverting an asteroid away from Earth.

Astra Space, a California-based startup staking a claim in the burgeoning small-satellite launch business, completed a successful flight test of its Rocket 3.1 booster on Nov. 20, a mission backed by the U.S. Space Force.

Voyager Space, a private equity-backed holding company of new-space upstarts such as Nanoracks, announced Nov. 22 it has acquired a majority stake in Space Micro, a satellite communications specialist for NASA and the U.S. military.

The mission is a bold attempt to demonstrate whether a spacecraft traveling at high velocity can slam into an asteroid with enough kinetic energy to knock it off course—an ability that could one day enable humanity to counter objects that pose an impact threat to Earth.

Northrop Grumman’s 16th NASA-contracted Cygnus resupply mission capsule departed the International Space Station on Nov. 20, ending a stay of just more than three months and setting up an experiment intended to improve the modeling of spacecraft thermal protection systems.