Space

With FAA approval to use unmanned aircraft for aerial photography and a deal with Planet Labs to buy satellite imagery, Woolpert plans to bring the two together to enable new geospatial information services.

Launch of a SpaceX Falcon9 with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) was scrubbed 2 min. before liftoff.

From X-planes to the “black budget” to where the U.S. is placing its technology bets for the future, our editors discuss what’s buried in President Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget request to Congress.

Galileo will comprise a civilian-controlled constellation of 30 satellites, but civil aviation authorities are skeptical that Europe’s space sector can meet navigation and communications safety standards.

Google Lunar XPrize grants contestants more time and money to meet a difficult goal.

An annual assessment of NASA’s human spaceflight programs points to safety risks resulting from a lack of transparency and a disconnect between program goals and funding.

NASA’s fiscal 2016 budget request continues to feature past policies, and is likely to experience past partisan battles on Capitol Hill as well.

CEO Alexander Serkin said customers have nothing to fear and all obligations will be met.

NASA is asking for $500 million more in fiscal 2016 than it received from Congress last year to try to meet its many obligations.

Since unveiling plans in January to build rival networks of hundreds, or even thousands, of Internet satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), SpaceX and OneWeb are prompting comparisons with past ventures that flopped, among them Teledesic and Skybridge, two well-financed start-ups whose visions of delivering high-speed broadband to the masses were thwarted by technical setbacks.

Controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are setting up NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Earth-observation satellite following its Jan. 31 launch into polar orbit from Vandenberg AFB, Calif.

NASA and its commercial crew partners open up about their plans, now that the legal hurdles have been cleared.

Early work is underway on an expendable version of the space shuttle main engine, which will power the heavy-lift Space Launch System.

SpaceX-USAF legal settlement offers little near-term gain for SpaceX, but it appears to serve the company’s strategic goals.

The Rise and Fall of a Launch Monopoly?

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have reached into their bag of tricks to keep NASA’s solar-propelled Dawn probe in good shape to enter orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, its second stop in the main asteroid belt.

Test-flight data for the Orion crew capsule heat shield will be important in the redesign process.

Canadian startup UrtheCast seeks to secure its future with revenues from imagery services and ISS commercial experiments.

Global demand for Earth-observation satellites booming, mainly from emerging countries lacking their own space programs.

Thanks to relatively abundant power, improved data links and a unique orbit, the ISS is an attractive vantage point for instruments designed to study Earth. Researchers are taking notice.

France seeks European partners for Musis imaging satellite program.

SpaceX has agreed to drop its lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force. In return, the service is vowing to increase the number of launches it plans to compete.

A preview of programs and issues to watch for during the first week of February, when the Pentagon makes its budget request to Congress.

Dueling global satellite Internet systems could be on the horizon if plans by SpaceX and OneWeb come to fruition.

Work on air-launch space access projects hits all-time high as test flights loom.