The Space Force’s two launch ranges have a shortage of spare parts for critical systems, which could impact future launches as the service projects a vast increase in missions, a new Pentagon report says.
After contributing 31 flights to a global record 146 orbital launches in 2021, SpaceX kicked off the new year by adding another 49 new satellites to its growing Starlink broadband network.
Paragon Space Development Corp. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Final Frontier Design as part of a joint financial effort to enhance future private spacesuit development for NASA and other spaceflight customers.
Flight controllers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore deployed the secondary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope on Jan. 5, as the list of critical reconfigurations to prepare the observatory for its unprecedented science mission neared completion.
AST SpaceMobile, a newly public company aiming to establish a space-based cellular broadband network for smartphones, has offered a peak inside its 85,000-ft.2 manufacturing headquarters in Midland, Texas.
Flight controllers overseeing the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope breezed through the deployment and positioning of the observatory’s five-layer, tennis court-sized sunshield, completing what was considered the most technically complicated part of the mission ahead of schedule.
Addman Engineering, the additive manufacturing rollup under private equity investor American Industrial Partners, has acquired Castheon, a refractory metals maker that has partnered with spacecraft-providing companies, the companies announced Jan. 3.
Large U.S. defense prime contractor L3Harris Technologies has reorganized to include just three main business divisions, with Aviation Systems and its top unit executive no longer part of the company’s structure.
After successfully unfurling the James Webb Space Telescope’s tennis court-sized sunshield, flight controllers on Jan. 3 completed tensioning three of the shield’s five diamond-shaped membranes.
The reconfiguration of the James Webb Space Telescope continued on Dec. 30 with the removal of covers that protected the observatory’s delicate sunshield for launch, setting the stage for the deployment of a five-layer, tennis court-sized structure needed to passively cool the telescope for its science program.
NASA and Roscosmos continue to pursue an astronaut/cosmonaut crew exchange agreement for Soyuz and NASA Commercial Crew launches to the International Space Station.
