Space Industry Analysis
Jul 09, 2012
With several members facing debt crises at home, the European Space Agency (ESA) is paring Earth-observation spending plans ahead of a key budget meeting in November. The initial five-year, €1.9 billion ($2.4 billion) proposal for ESA's fourth Earth Observation Envelope Program (EOEP) will instead involve €1.6 billion over four years, says Volker Liebig, ESA director of Earth-observation programs.
Jul 09, 2012
CEO says he hopes new and returning players will help foster more choice and competition
Jul 09, 2012
Jim McNerney on commercial and defense plans and programs.
Jul 02, 2012
Russia has claimed the successful test of a prototype of new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The new missile was fired from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk spaceport in May and its warhead reached a designated area in the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The military also said the missile will have improved capabilities to overcome anti-ballistic missile defenses being deployed by the U.S.—an important new priority for Moscow after years of trying to forestall U.S. missile-defense developments.
Jul 02, 2012
Walter J. Zable, the aerospace industry's oldest and longest-serving CEO and a pioneer in the field of global positioning, died June 23 of natural causes at a San Diego-area hospital. He was 97. Zable founded Cubic Corp. in 1951 in a San Diego storefront. Long before GPS was invented, the company developed a satellite-based technology that identified the location of land masses and enabled the U.S. military to pinpoint targets to improve the accuracy of ballistic missiles. Later, Cubic fielded the world's first instrumented air combat training system.
Jul 02, 2012
New flight trials for X-51, X-48, Phantom Eye demonstrate advanced vehicles
Apr 13, 2020
A small helicopter flying as a technology demonstration with NASA’s Mars 2020 mission has been attached to the Perseverance rover in preparation for launch this summer.
Apr 13, 2020
Nonignition of a third-stage engine caused the failure of a mission by a Calt Long March 3B rocket on March 9, according to a part owner of the Indonesian customer that lost its satellite.
Apr 13, 2020
NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, have joined the list of NASA facilities reaching Stage 4 of the agency’s Response Framework to COVID-19.
Apr 13, 2020
Significant changes in the oversight of the International Space Station’s (ISS) National Laboratory research and technology development operations may be imminent.
Apr 13, 2020
Rocket company Virgin Orbit completed a major dress rehearsal of its LauncherOne vehicle launch system on April 12, marking the final test of the five-year development program and clearing the way for the first demonstration launch.
Apr 10, 2020
Astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station are those most typically considered to be isolated from friends, family, and the rest of humanity for extended periods. But the coronavirus pandemic may be altering that equation.
Apr 09, 2020
France–The European Space Agency (ESA)’s BepiColombo, the probe it launched in 2018 to study the planet Mercury, is performing a flyby of Earth this week as a gravity-assist maneuver in its seven-year-long journey.
Apr 09, 2020
A NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts successfully docked to the International Space Station April 9, just more than 6 hr. after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with all three men prepared, if necessary, to continue minimal staffing of the orbiting science lab through October.