With the successful launch of an experimental cubesat for the U.S. Space Force, Rocket Lab returned its Electron small satellite launcher into commercial service on July 29, with about six more missions on its manifest for the year.
German satellite launch startup Isar Aerospace has secured $75 million from investors which include Porsche, the majority owner of the Volkswagen automobile company.
The space agencies of Canada, Italy and Japan are joining with NASA in a worldwide call for qualified applicants to contribute to a measurement definition team that will support a future International Mars Ice Mapper Mission orbiter.
With nearly $1.8 million in private donations, a pair of Harvard University scientists has unveiled a project to use civilian science observatories and instruments to scout for unidentified aerial phenomena in Earth’s skies and beyond.
Fresh off Blue Origin’s first human spaceflight, founder Jeff Bezos is offering to cut his company’s fee for a human lunar landing demonstration mission dramatically and add—at company expense—an orbital flight test.
Russia’s near two-decade-old Pirs docking compartment and airlock left the International Space Station (ISS) in the grasp of the Progress MS-16 cargo capsule early July 26.
The same day Blue Origin made its first human spaceflight, sending four passengers into suborbital space, the Federal Aviation Administration issued new FAA Commercial Space Astronaut Wings eligibility requirements.
Ad Astra Rocket Co. has reached another milestone in its long-running quest to develop an electric propulsion capability to hasten the human exploration of Mars and other space activities.
Russia has successfully launched a new module for the International Space Station (ISS), lofting the 20-ton Nauka multipurpose scientific lab atop a Proton-M heavy launcher at 5:58 p.m. Moscow time (10:58 a.m. EDT) July 21 from Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.
German aerospace center DLR plans to develop a full-scale flight test version of an advanced, lightweight hybrid rocket engine following successful ground runs of a prototype at its Trauen site near Hamburg.
The International Space Station’s four U.S. segment crewmembers boarded their SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon capsule early July 21 to relocate the capsule from the Harmony module forward to the Harmony zenith docking port, freeing a parking spot for the arrival of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner.
Korean Air and Seoul National University have been commissioned by the Republic of Korea Air Force to explore using the Boeing 747-400 passenger aircraft for an air launch system, similar to Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne.
The 10-min. suborbital spaceflight on July 20 marks the first time a crewed spacecraft made a debut flight without test pilots, test engineers or professional astronauts aboard.
Startup Rhea Space Activity is to study a solar-thermal propulsion system capable of rapidly repositioning a deep-space communications spacecraft for the U.S. Space Force.
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory ended a mission on May 31 that was studying advanced spacecraft control techniques and the challenges of flight in medium Earth orbit.
Rocket Lab has modified the design and manufacture of the igniter for the Rutherford engine after a fault in this system was identified as the root cause of the company’s Electron launch vehicle failure on May 15.
A Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft was transported to its launchpad at Cape Canaveral and mounted on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in preparation for liftoff on July 30.
The Hubble Space Telescope, now 31 years old, resumed science operations over the weekend following a June 13 interruption eventually traced to the observatory’s Primary Payload Computer.
