NASA and SpaceX on Nov. 5 continued to assess how best to schedule a planned crew rotation aboard the International Space Station in response to a challenging weather outlook affecting a Falcon 9 Crew-3 Dragon launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, French national space center CNES and Airbus have inked a letter of intent to cooperate on Earth-observation satellites, including development of VNREDSat-2. 

Equipped with emerging propulsion and navigation technologies, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test is intended to demonstrate for the first time the potential effectiveness of a kinetic impact strategy in deflecting an asteroid on a destructive collision course with Earth.

Three-year-old New York startup Innovative Rocket Technologies on Nov. 4 said it has signed an agreement with two-year-old Turion Space of Irvine, California, to launch 20 of the latter’s proposed Droid orbital-debris-removing satellites to low Earth orbit via iRocket’s planned Shockwave launcher.

The acquisition broadens CACI’s capabilities as a U.S.-based FSO laser communications provider supporting space, airborne and terrestrial missions to U.S. government and commercial customers.

The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office on Nov. 3 released a request for proposals to industry for the Electro-Optical Commercial Layer, a step for improved commercial imagery with a specific focus on intelligence and military needs.

The U.S. military needs to develop more offensive capabilities in space, coupled with beefing up defenses for critical satellites, to maintain superiority in that domain as China rapidly closes the gap, the nation’s top uniformed military official warned.

UK startup Isotropic Systems has demonstrated the first simultaneous connections with communications satellites in different orbits, its solid-state terminal linking to SES spacecraft in both geostationary and medium Earth orbits at the same time.