Russian intends to fly cosmonauts to the Chinese Space Station, launching Soyuz capsules from its own Vostochny Cosmodrome or Europe’s Kourou, French Guiana, spaceport, though neither site has yet supported a human spaceflight, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian State Space Corp., said on June 15.

Rocket Lab will provide two Photon satellites for a NASA-backed small-science mission to explore the magnetosphere of Mars.

The U.S. Space Force is gearing up for the first-ever National Security Space Launch featuring a reusable booster that is scheduled to send the fifth GPS III satellite into space.

Bidding to ride on the first passenger flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft closed at $28 million, with the unnamed winner to join company founder and funder Jeff Bezos, his brother and one other person for a ride slated for July 20.

Hard mate between the 212-ft. tall, 188,000-lb. core stage and the Northrop Grumman five-segment booster rockets occurred at about 7 a.m. EDT on June 13 in High Bay 3 of Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building. 

This could be final year of observations with SOFIA as the White House 2022 budget proposal for NASA calls for the cancellation of the airborne observatory.

The June 13 launch came less than four months after contract signing, demonstrating a responsive space capability for the U.S. Space Force.

Despite being responsible for two very different areas of the world, U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Northern Command are both seeking additional funding in fiscal 2022 for satellite communications, according to documents obtained by Aerospace DAILY.