Startup Space Perspective is looking to early 2021 to begin test flights of a high-altitude balloon with a pressurized capsule from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), with an eye toward carrying commercial passengers and research payloads.
Chinese scientists have taken a large step toward a theoretically secure communication technology, demonstrating quantum key distribution (QKD) between ground stations via a satellite.
With the support of a newly appointed associate administrator, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has expressed confidence that his agency can achieve an accelerated return to the Moon’s surface with human explorers by 2024.
The planned launch of the Perseverance Mars 2020 rover from Cape Canaveral on July 20 is intended to help set the stage for sending astronauts to the red planet in the 2030s.
LONDON—Washington and London have reached an agreement on technology safeguards that paves the way for the use of U.S.-developed space launchers from UK soil.
The Pentagon has released a new Defense Space Strategy providing a framework for the U.S. military to achieve “desired conditions” in space over the next 10 years.
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions will acquire CPI ASC Signal Division from Communications & Power Industries for $35 million in cash, in a deal that further guarantees the U.S. government at least two major providers of key satellite communications technology.
DARPA has awarded Blue Canyon Technologies a $14.2 million contract to provide commercial satellite buses for the Blackjack program to demonstrate a military constellation of autonomous satellites in low Earth orbit connected by a high-speed network.
Fresh off a major milestone in a difficult 10-year effort by NASA to establish a U.S. commercial capability to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), Kathy Lueders has taken over leadership of an accelerated effort by the agency to return human explorers to the Moon’s surface in 2024.
After an 11-week hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rocket Lab resumed launch operations on June 13 by successfully launching a payload of small satellites for NASA, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the University of New South Wales Canberra Space into low Earth orbit.
Representatives from the three commercial Human Lander System developers recently chosen by NASA to shuttle future astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface are expressing confidence that their efforts can help the agency achieve the White House goal of returning to the Moon with astronauts in 2024 and establishing a sustainable presence.
Japanese telecommunications operator SoftBank remains committed to AeroVironment’s high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS) unmanned aircraft, the latter’s top executive said.
NASA has awarded Astrobotic a $199.5 million contract to deliver the Volatiles Investigation Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s south pole in 2023, where it will search for water ice deposits that could be useful to future astronauts.
Expectations for a March 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are fading, agency officials told a June 10 virtual meeting of the National Academies of Sciences’ Space Studies Board (SSB).
NASA’s Perseverance Mars 2020 rover will experience a three-day delay to its planned mid-July launch due to an issue with ground equipment at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch site.
The director of the White House National Space Council believes NASA’s push to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024 is helping the agency significantly streamline its decision-making, though there’s more to do.
A more powerful version of China’s Long March 11 solid-propellant space launcher will fly in 2022, state manufacturer Casc has told government news agency Xinhua.
