Isotropic Systems simultaneously connected a multilink satellite terminal to satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) and geostationary orbit during trials at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.
The National Reconnaissance Office and SpaceX on Feb. 2 plan to launch the first Falcon 9 carrying an NRO payload procured under the National Security Space Launch program, and the first time a booster will be reused for another NRO mission.
After waiting out poor weather and a wayward cruise ship in Florida, SpaceX on Jan. 31 launched the newest member of Italy’s synthetic aperture radar Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation network, completing the fourth of 52 missions SpaceX plans this year.
Crowdsourcing platform HeroX is again working with NASA through a just-announced competition aimed at tackling another technical challenge to enable a two- to three-year roundtrip human expedition to Mars.
Under a joint project to create an optical internet service connecting low-orbiting satellites with high-flying unmanned aircraft, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Sony researchers have demonstrated high-speed, large-capacity communications in a low-quality, error-prone environment.
Masten Space Systems is touting progress with its Nighttime Integrated Thermal and Electricity system, designed as a low-cost/low-mass method for keeping electronics and payloads on commercial lunar landers alive during nights on the Moon.
Now that NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover team has cleared a pebble obstruction from its sample collection mechanism, the robot geologist is ready to resume drilling into selected rocks that may host evidence of past microbial life on the red planet.
Twelve-year-old Satellogic, an Earth observation satellite systems and analytics company, became publicly traded in late January after the reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), as well as an 11th-hour investment boost via former Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
Roscosmos plans to start testing the new Angara A5M and Soyuz-5 rockets as well as the Oryol spaceship, all of which are intended to replace legacy Soviet hardware still in operation.
Space debris removal startup Astroscale has halted an autonomous capture demonstration in low Earth orbit after detecting anomalous spacecraft conditions.
D-Orbit, an 11-year-old Italian startup offering the Ion Satellite Carrier for in-orbit positioning, unveiled a go-public effort on Jan. 27 to start trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange in a deal that should provide it up to $185 million.
NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are prepared to leverage a mutual and historically advantageous course in space, representatives from the two agencies say.
The U.S. Space Force is planning a series of its own high-level exercises to specifically train on individual mission areas—following the model of the service it grew out of.
NASA has identified 12 launch services providers eligible to contract for dedicated and rideshare launches to a range of destinations under the agency’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare initiative.
A Chinese spacecraft that disappeared from orbit on Jan. 22 appears to be serving as a “space tug,” raising a defunct Chinese navigation satellite thousands of kilometers beyond geostationary orbit, according to a company that operates a network of more than 350 optical telescopes around the world.
Houston-based Celestis, which flies cremated remains in one of the more unique—and long-lived—commercial space service ventures, is adding a second payload on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) debut Vulcan mission, slated to launch later this year.
Russian cosmonaut Nikolay Chub has received a U.S. entry visa, allowing him to attend training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Roscosmos confirmed Jan 26.
Spinoff 2022 is NASA’s latest edition of an annual profile linking the challenges of overcoming the technical hurdles of human spaceflight and other aerospace initiatives to improving life on Earth.
Engineers believe they have tracked the cause of a problem that prevented one of the two circular solar arrays on NASA’s Lucy asteroid probe from unfurling completely, according to mission Principal Investigator Hal Levison, with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
