After a two-day weather delay, NASA’s quartet of Crew-4 astronauts departed the International Space Station aboard their Freedom SpaceX Dragon capsule on Oct. 14 for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, ending a 170-day mission to the orbital science laboratory.
The Pentagon is in discussions with SpaceX about the future of Starlink satellite internet connectivity in Ukraine after the company threatened to end the service if the Defense Department does not pick up the bill, while the military is also reaching out to alternative satellite communications providers.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite—launched nearly 4 1/2 years ago to search for extrasolar planets—has suspended science operations in response to a suspected flight computer reset, a mission status update says.
With business partnerships sweeping across the new space and commercial space marketplace–for survival, growth or both–relative newcomer Sierra Space has opened its own corporate venture capital (VC) office to facilitate strategic tie-ups with other space upstarts.
NASA and SpaceX on Oct. 13 delayed the departure of the Crew-4 Dragon Freedom astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) for a second day due to unfavorable weather in the recovery zones.
Japan’s Space Cotan Ltd. and the Hokkaido town of Taiki have begun the expansion of Hokkaido Spaceport (HOSPO), part of its vision to create a space Silicon Valley in Japan.
Venture capital groups for Airbus and Boeing have teamed with others to provide a $10 million seed funding round for Arizona-based Solestial, a startup working on solar panel technology for satellites and spacecraft.
Eutelsat Communications said Oct. 12 that its proposed acquisition of OneWeb would grow its annual expected revenue to almost $2 billion by fiscal 2027, from less than $1.2 billion in fiscal 2021.
NASA has awarded two companies contracts to undertake capability studies that assess and demonstrate communications and navigation services in support of the agency’s Artemis initiative.
Pioneering space tourist Dennis Tito, who 21 years ago became the first privately paying passenger to visit the International Space Station, has booked two seats aboard a planned SpaceX Starship mission around the Moon.
A pair of test satellites for Amazon’s planned 3,236-member Kuiper broadband constellation will be launched as secondary payloads on the debut flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan-Centaur rocket, targeted for early 2023.
NASA has declared its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission a major success in its demonstration of a “kinetic impact” strategy that could be used to change the trajectory of a large asteroid on a course to impact the Earth.
New standardized mechanical interfaces for grappling and connecting spacecraft are critical to enabling growth of the in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing industries, a panel of industry players says.
At the request of its customer, United Launch Alliance is delaying the debut flight of its Vulcan-Centaur booster to the first quarter of 2023, though CEO Tory Bruno acknowledges that even if Astrobotic’s lunar lander was ready, it would be difficult to make the previously targeted December launch date due to delays with Vulcan’s BE-4 core stage engines.
Mission controllers have regained attitude control of the NASA-funded Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment small satellite.
