Space

After 29 months, Boeing will again attempt to fly its commercial space taxi to the space station.

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

An international team of astronomers has directly imaged for the first time the telltale ring of gas surrounding the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, some 27,000 light years from Earth.

Fresh off the success of the first U.S. private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, Axiom Space has broken ground on a headquarters campus at Houston Spaceport to support work on the first U.S. commercially developed and operated space station.

Initial efforts for Istari will be focused on the development of a synthetic aperture radar, but additional capabilities will be added.

Russia blamed for Viasat attack; MQ-9B adds short-takeoff capability; U.S., Japan to study loyal wingman; and Black Hawk sustainment.

Mini-rover Moon landing planned for later this year to prove technology for pressurized JAXA-Toyota Lunar Cruiser.

Several lawmakers are continuing to raise concerns about the decision to base U.S. Space Command’s headquarters in Alabama even after the Defense Department Inspector General on May 10 issued its findings that the Air Force’s choice was reasonable.

Less than a week after their safe return to Earth, NASA’s four SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts offered a positive assessment of a growing workload aboard the International Space Station and the level of mutual trust and camaraderie among the astronauts and cosmonauts who serve despite Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.

UK space startup Orbex has unveiled a fully completed prototype of the company’s Prime satellite launcher.

Satellite air launch company Virgin Orbit has secured an agreement with conversion specialist L3 Harris Technologies to acquire two Boeing 747-400 airframes to support growth plans for additional launch capacity.

Lockheed Martin-General Motors lunar vehicle designed to transit moon autonomously for prepositioned rendezvous with incoming missions.

NASA has every intention of leveraging commercial partnerships as it plans a return to the Moon with human explorers, according to those at the agency closely involved in laying the groundwork.

The U.S. Space Force is overhauling how the military tests its satellites, with the goal of speeding up the process, relying more on digital modeling to represent new threats, and growing a more skilled workforce to meet that need.

Ukraine is hoping to become a “trustworthy partner” to the West on future space projects, the former chairman of the country’s space agency says.

The U.S., the European Union and multiple other nations on May 10 formally attributed cyber attacks against Viasat’s KA-SAT network on Feb. 24 to Russia, claiming Moscow attempted to disrupt Ukrainian command and control as the invasion began.

U.S. launch startup Astra Space has teamed up with the UK’s SaxaVord Spaceport as a potential new location for satellite launches.

The highly anticipated debut of the WorldView Legion high-resolution constellation from Maxar Technologies is slipping again, this time to September, as the Colorado company works through a test configuration anomaly, executives announced late May 9.

The UK Defense Ministry will launch a pair of CubeSats on the first planned horizontal launch from a UK spaceport as early as this summer.

Xona Space Systems has finished environmental testing of its Huginn demonstrator satellite ahead of its planned May 25 launch on SpaceX’s Transporter 5 rideshare mission.

With its first launch in the offing, Vega C is to start a series of key and long-awaited evolutions in Arianespace’s offering.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is entering the final phase of commissioning prior to the start of science observations this summer, project scientists told reporters May 9. The telescope, which launched on Dec. 25, 2021, aboard an Arianespace Ariane V rocket, is designed to follow on and expand scientific observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope and other space observatories.

Blue Origin’s next flight of the New Shepard suborbital spacecraft will include its first repeat customer.

Momentus’ space tug demonstrator has arrived at Cape Canaveral for its inaugural launch aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-5 mission after its application for payload review won FAA approval.

NASA’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket will head back to its Kennedy Space Center launchpad in June for a second run at a Wet Dress Rehearsal as the agency strives to get the system’s first lunar test flight, Artemis I, underway by summer’s end.