LYON, France—Arianespace is planning on resuming operations with a Vega launch in mid-June as activity at Europe’s space center in Kourou, French Guiana, gradually restarts after being suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

NASA has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $1.8 billion contract to manufacture 18 additional RS-25 engines to support Space Launch System flights to the Moon. 

SpaceX completed the 27th and final test of its Mk 3 parachutes on May 1, one of the final milestones before NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Doug Hurley are cleared for a flight test aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. 

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity conducted the first unpowered gliding test flight from Spaceport America on May 1, marking another key step toward the planned start of commercial suborbital services from the New Mexico site.

Teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX will receive nearly $1 billion in NASA funding to hone designs and development plans for lunar landing systems to carry a pair of U.S. astronauts to the Moon’s surface in 2024, a time frame the agency is sticking with despite economic and social upheavals caused by the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. 

Already cost and schedule challenged across a broad range of space initiatives, NASA faces more stress on both fronts as it surges to achieve an accelerated return to the Moon’s surface with humans in 2024, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says.

Two companies have joined forces to spark a pair of competitions for teams of 9th- through 12th-grade students to design and assemble race cars for the Moon.

Imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope has further confirmed the breakup of the comet Atlas.