After a two-day delay to conduct additional ground equipment checks, the Soyuz 2.1a rocket flew through clouds above the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan at 2:07 a.m. EDT on March 22.
NASA’s nearly two-decade-long push to establish game-changing commercial partnerships in low Earth orbit operations to expand human exploration and scientific research and grow the economy is broadening its scope to include a new role for private sector communications and navigation assets and services.
Glynn Lunney, a member of the Space Task Group that launched NASA’s human spaceflight operations and the flight director remembered for leading the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew, has died at 84.
International Space Station Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineers Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Kate Rubins boarded their Russian Soyuz MS-17 on March 19 and undocked from the orbital outpost, reparking 34 min. later at a different module to clear the preferred port for the arrival of the next crew.
President Joe Biden on March 19 nominated former three-term Sen. Bill Nelson, (D-Fla.), to serve as the 14th administrator of NASA, succeeding fellow former U.S. legislator Jim Bridenstine, whose nomination Nelson opposed.
The first fully commercial space launch of the Russian Soyuz 2.1a vehicle in 2021, planned for March 20, is expected to orbit 38 various satellites from 18 countries into three different Sun-synchronous orbits.
Listen in as Nanoracks CEO Jeff Manber predicts that by the end of the year, private space companies will have more discretionary money to spend than the U.S. federal government.
The Pentagon is diversifying the U.S. early missile warning portfolio with a mix of satellite types and sizes in different orbits to prevent unwanted missile attacks.
NASA’s Space Launch System core stage fired up its four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines on March 18 for a critical, 8-min. integrated test ahead of the booster’s debut launch on the uncrewed Artemis I lunar mission.
With its Starlink broadband network now exceeding 1,200 satellites, SpaceX formalized an agreement with NASA to operate its megaconstellation on a noninterference basis with the International Space Station and other agency spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
The FAA has renewed two launch operator licenses for Northrop Grumman for its aircraft-launched Pegasus rocket system from Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, and Cape Canaveral, the agency said March 17.
Though the Martian surface is now cold and dry, imagery dating back to the 1960s reveals a planet where large amounts of water once flowed and pooled, perhaps contributing to an environment amenable to life.
SpaceX continues to expand the operational envelope of its Falcon 9 fleet, with a successful ninth launch and landing of a first-stage booster, setting the stage to meet its goal of 10 launches per rocket with minimal refurbishment between flights.
Maxar Technologies has selected European companies TTTech Aerospace and RUAG Space to provide the backbone of the fault-tolerant communications network for the foundational Power and Propulsion Element of NASA’s lunar-orbiting Gateway.
Relativity Space has secured its first contract with the Pentagon, through the Defense Innovation Unit, to provide responsive launch capability for the military.
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei has endorsed his March 9 assignment to lift off aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-18 on April 9 to help ensure a continuous U.S. presence aboard the International Space Station.
China orbited another trio of Yaogan-31 Earth remote sensing satellites using a Long March 4C rocket launched from the country’s oldest and most northern spaceport in Jiuquan, Inner Mongolia on March 13, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC).
Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC-3) aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was reactivated over the weekend, following a low-voltage incident linked to the aging observatory’s recent lapse into safe mode.
The French Air and Space Force is conducting its first virtual exercise for military operations in space, a weeklong simulation of various threats against satellites to test the fledging space command’s reaction.
After working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a robot arm for the Perseverance Mars 2020 rover, Motiv Space Systems is developing durable, multi-jointed limb also capable of functioning at the Moon’s south pole during long periods of darkness and extreme cold.
