The tests should validate launchpad infrastructure, evaluate countdown procedures and train the launch team in advance of the inaugural Vulcan mission in 2022.
Launch of the Landsat 9 spacecraft, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, is being delayed a week due to a pandemic-related supply issue.
Fledging small satellite launch provider Astra Space once again failed to reach orbit, but the booster managed 2 1/2 min. of flight time despite losing an engine less than 1 sec. after liftoff from Alaska’s Kodiak Island.
Australia’s fledgling space industry is attracting investment, with on-orbit inspection startup HEO Robotics completing a seed funding round led by British billionaire David Harding, founder and CEO of investment management company Winton Group.
NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion are big-government programs trying to keep pace in a marketplace increasingly dominated by commercial industry, meanwhile, the U.S. military is looking to build bridges to international partners, that same commercial industry and to the intelligence community.
Sierra Space is in discussions with the European Space Agency and German aerospace center DLR to extend existing partnerships covering crew access to the International Space Station to include new commercial vehicles.
U.S. Space Force, Space Command and the National Reconnaissance Office have signed a “protected defense” strategic framework to align their space warfighting efforts.
Aircraft and satellites are being used in a research campaign to measure methane being released as the permafrost thaws in regions north of the Arctic Circle.
Startup Astroscale’s ELSA-d orbital debris removal demonstration has accomplished its first key goal, with the servicer satellite showing how it would capture a defunct spacecraft.
Production of the first all-new and modernized RS-25 engines for NASA’s Space Launch System has begun in Aerojet Rocketdyne’s newly expanded Los Angeles manufacturing facility.
Startup Firefly Aerospace says plans remain on schedule to attempt the first launch of its two-stage Alpha rocket from Vandenburg SFB, California, on Sept. 2 following a successful static fire test in mid-August.
With support from a NASA Tipping Point technology development award, Mojave, California-based Masten is developing a suborbital aerospace testbed with an option for point-to-point payload transportation.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall plans to begin working now to incorporate the Space Development Agency (SDA) into the U.S. Space Force, a bureaucratic transition not scheduled until Oct. 1, 2022.
