British satellite launcher firm Skyrora has undertaken a full static fire test of its Skylark-L rocket, the first test of this scale since the UK’s Black Arrow program 50 years ago.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 20 for final preparations ahead of launch next week to test SpaceX’s Crew Dragon system.

Boeing, which was shut out of nearly $1 billion of NASA funding to develop human-class lunar landers, said it does not plan to protest the awards, which went to teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX. 

The U.S. Commerce Department on May 19 released a long-awaited new rule for the export of remote sensing services.

Two days before he was to chair the Flight Readiness Review for the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, marking the return of U.S. human orbital flight capability, NASA Associate Administrator Douglas Loverro is leaving the agency. 

Citing concerns about Tropical Storm Arthur, which was passing off the coast of North Carolina on May 18, SpaceX is standing down from its planned May 19 launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to build out its Starlink network, putting the long-awaited flight test of a crewed Dragon spacecraft next on the launch schedule. 

Virgin Orbit completed a second dress rehearsal of its LauncherOne small satellite launch system on May 15, but plans to conduct some additional testing ahead of the vehicle’s orbital test flight, targeted for later this month.

The satellite operator Intelsat announced May 13 that it has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a financial restructuring to free up liquidity and continue operations while it awaits repayment from the government from an auction of C-band spectrum.