Space

Blue Origin simulated pre- and post-launch passenger operations as its 15th suborbital launch of the New Shepard lifted off on April 14.

Orbital Sidekick, a San Francisco-based startup aiming to offer satellite-based hyperspectral imaging and data analytics for the energy sector and others, has wrapped up a $16 million series A investment round, as expected.

Astrobiotic’s Griffin lunar lander, carrying NASA’s water-hunting VIPER rover, will fly on a Falcon Heavy, perhaps in late 2023.

Fixing an issue with NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter will require a slight modification to the vehicle’s software, delaying the first flight test.

The second Mission Extension Vehicle, MEV-2, autonomously docked with the Intelsat 10-02 satellite on April 12 in its operational GEO location at 1 deg. West longitude.

In the broad sweep of history, imagine the roughly 70-year path to the creation of the U.S. Space Force as a single line on a blank page.

The announcement confirmed the spacecraft designers in Track B of Phase 1 of DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (Draco) program.

Gen. Thomas Moorman pressed a decades-long campaign through a minefield of bureaucratic and geopolitical obstacles to elevate a fractured and often dysfunctional space enterprise to a status equivalent to the naval, land and air domains.

Space Hero Partnerships has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to study sending a reality TV show winning contestant to the ISS.

Exolaunch, which specializes in rideshare brokerage and equipment, is planning a space tug for orbit-customization and debris-deorbiting.

Do SPACs herald a brave new world for space dreamers or a repeat of the dot-bomb era of the early 2000s and the space flops of the 1990s?

The award begins a two-track Phase 1 for the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Opeations (Draco) demonstration program.

Ingenuity was preparing to spin its dual rotors at full speed—the last in a series of preflight checkouts—late on April 9 when the issue occurred.

Australia’s Electro Optic Systems has demonstrated technology that is key to tracking and moving space debris in low Earth orbit that uses a laser-generated guide star and adaptive optics to remove atmospheric distortion and increase the laser power on target.

Former NASA astronaut and U S. Air Force test pilot Jack Fischer has joined with the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership (BAHEP) to provide the emerging Houston Spaceport with TexSpace, a future nonprofit focused on facilitating innovation within the space enterprise.

OrbComm, the low Earth orbit constellation provider of industrial connectivity services whose roots date to 1990s commercial space efforts, will be acquired by GI Partners, a U.S.-based investor in data infrastructure businesses, in an all-cash deal worth around $1.1 billion, including net debt.

The EU, the European Space Agency and their member states should convene in a high-level summit next year and define a European ambition in space, says Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s new director general.

The Biden administration is requesting $24.7 billion for NASA for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, a 6.3% hike over the agency’s current funding level.

Russia’s Soyuz MS-18 capsule carrying NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov docked to the International Space Station early April 9.

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts initiative has awarded $5 million in grants to seven innovators, among them a Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher investigating the possible construction of a lunar far side radio telescope using wire mesh embedded in an impact crater by small climbing robots.

Rocket Lab plans to conduct its second parachute-assisted booster splashdown next month, as it works to evolve the Electron small satellite launch vehicle into a reusable rocket, the company said on April 8.

The U.S. Space Force intends to establish a Space Systems Command this summer, pending the nomination and Senate confirmation of a three-star commander.

The launch of the Luna-25 automatic lander planned for October will mark Russia’s return to lunar exploration.

Airbus and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) are to develop a terminal for aircraft to receive laser-based communications.

Philippe Baptiste, an engineer by training with experience in science, industry and politics, is to succeed Jean-Yves Le Gall at the helm of French space agency CNES after the country’s parliament approved the nomination.