After more than 30 countdown simulations, two core-stage Green Run static engine firings and four launchpad wet dress rehearsals, countdown clocks at Kennedy Space Center were scheduled to start ticking down on Aug. 27 for the long-awaited launch of the first Space Launch System rocket.
T-Mobile has announced an agreement to use SpaceX’s Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit communications satellites for text message coverage across the continental U.S., Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and U.S. territorial waters—remote regions outside the signal of T-Mobile’s terrestrial network.
HawkEye 360 and the U.S. Army have signed a new, two-year agreement to develop and demonstrate new overhead radio frequency sensing capabilities that could be used to cue military surveillance assets.
NASA on Aug. 25 was on track to begin the two-day launch countdown for its first Space Launch System rocket, leading to a launch attempt at 8:33 a.m. EDT on Aug. 29 from Kennedy Space Center.
Boeing is aiming to launch its third CST-100 Starliner spacecraft—this time with a pair of NASA astronauts aboard—in about six months, managers told reporters on Aug. 25.
Amid growing orbital threats from China and Russia, U.S. Space Command is calling on industry for innovative solutions to form a global space domain awareness sensor network that will be interoperable with systems used by international allies.
NASA has chosen three companies to continue the development and environmental testing of prototype vertical solar arrays that could be positioned at the Moon’s south pole to provide electrical power for a range of future human and robotic operations.
Following an 11-hr. flight readiness review, NASA on Aug. 22 cleared the first Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for a launch on the kickoff mission of the Artemis program, a U.S.-led initiative to establish a permanent human presence in deep space.
Startup Relativity Space successfully completed a full-duration, 20-sec. test run of its Terran 1 rocket with its nine first-stage Aeon liquid oxygen/liquid natural gas engines at Cape Canaveral on Aug. 22, clearing a major hurdle toward a planned debut launch attempt in the coming weeks or months.
Frank Rubio, the first NASA astronaut scheduled to travel to and from the International Space Station under a new launch seat exchange agreement between NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos, has praised efforts by the two agencies to continue their cooperation in space.
NASA is asking the aerospace industry to describe a commercial strategy for the planned deorbiting of the International Space Station, which is currently planned for the end of 2030.
As NASA gears up for the kickoff mission of its Artemis lunar exploration initiative, the agency on Aug. 19 identified 13 regions on the Moon’s south pole that are under consideration to become the Tranquility Base of a new generation.
