The rise of launch companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab have shown the U.S. government how it can leverage the investment of private companies to reduce its costs and improve its technologies.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has set up a joint research framework with domestic manufacturers and Boeing with the objective of commercializing noise reduction technology demonstrated under its Fquroh research program.
Low-Earth-orbit launch upstart Rocket Lab will become a publicly traded company Aug. 25 after shareholders approved a reverse merger with Vector Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, grossing three-quarters of a billion dollars for the 15-year-old rocket company.
U.S. Transportation Command has asked launch companies and academics to provide cost estimates for delivering military cargo via space over the next 20 years.
Unlike some planetary destinations, the asteroid Psyche was never the target of a spacecraft flyby before becoming an orbital destination for a $1 billion NASA probe, which is adding to the challenge as the Psyche mission team prepares for a planned launch one year from now.
One of the James Webb Space Telescope’s early science tasks, called COSMOS-Webb, will be a wide and deep mapping of the 13.7 billion-year-old universe.
Blue Origin’s next New Shepard flight will test the upgraded lidar and descent landing computer NASA is developing to enable lunar landings at sites that were considered too challenging during the Apollo era.
NASA’s nine-year-old Mars Curiosity rover is climbing out of a region rich in clay minerals that likely formed in a warmer, wet era on the now cold and dry red planet to a region dominated by salty minerals called sulfates, the agency said on Aug. 17.
Microsoft will provide the use of its cloud and be a customer to SES for its O3b mPower satellite constellation, which will dramatically improve connectivity for governments and military customers, according to the CEO of SES.
Big data analytics disruptor Palantir Technologies and BlackSky, a startup with a burgeoning constellation of imaging satellites and its own data analytics service, are partnering to offer their combined services for allied government customers.
Small-rocket mass-manufacturing startup Phantom Space has acquired Micro Aerospace Solutions, a 21-year-old Melbourne, Florida, provider of small satellite thruster, communications and data capabilities, the companies announced Aug. 17.
Blue Origin has turned to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to challenge NASA’s award of a single $2.94 billion contract to SpaceX for development of a lunar Human Landing System.
Honeywell said its Aspire 150 and 350 satellite communications systems designed to use Iridium’s new Certus high-speed L-band service should be certified this year.
While urban air mobility SPACs have generated many headlines in recent months, due in part to their eye-watering sums, the SPAC phenomenon has featured more new new-space public candidates by end-market.
Boeing and NASA’s Commercial Crew Program believe the launch of the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) to the International Space Station could be delayed until late this year and possibly into 2022.
Space Systems Command, which was formally activated during an outdoor ceremony on Aug. 13, received an urgent call by its new commander to expect more change as the U.S. military adjusts to a warfighting posture in the space domain.
Russia’s Roscosmos and Tunisian telecommunication company Telnet Holding signed a memorandum of understanding on Aug. 13 in Moscow calling for the preparation of Tunisia’s first person to travel into space, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said.
As NASA’s Osiris-Rex asteroid sample return mission speeds back to Earth to drop off materials gathered from the surface of Bennu, scientists have used data gathered during 30 months of close-up reconnaissance to determine the 500-meter-wide (1,640-ft.) object poses an extremely small impact threat to Earth.
The Cygnus, named for the late NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka, carries 8,210 lb. of crew supplies, ISS equipment, science experiments and technology demonstrations.
