The FAA has approved a modification to Blue Origin’s launch license to fly passengers, clearing the way for company founder and financier Jeff Bezos and three crewmates to fly on the New Shepard suborbital launch system on July 20, pending weather and technical checks.
SpaceShipTwo Unity glided to a landing at 9:32 am on July 11 after successfully providing a six-member crew, including Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson, a few minutes of weightlessness in space.
Footage of VMS Eve taking off from the runway of Spaceport America in New Mexico on the 22nd flight test for VSS Unity, this one with a crew of two pilots and four mission specialists.
NASA and Northrop Grumman have finalized a $935 million contract for development of the lunar Habitation and Logistics Outpost module, which along with the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) will comprise the initial components of the agency’s human-tended, lunar-orbiting Gateway.
SpaceX’s 22nd Dragon resupply mission spacecraft is headed for a late July 9 splashdown and recovery off Florida’s Gulf Coast, following a weather-delayed departure from the International Space Station’s U.S. segment with a 5,300-lb. return payload of science experiments, technology development hardware and other equipment.
Blacktree has joined Airbus Defense and Space’s Team Maier initiative, established in October 2020 to provide solutions for Australia's JP 9102 military satellite communication program.
The U.S. Space Force may begin testing early-warning satellites in medium-Earth orbit as early as 2022, which aligns with comments made by a service official last week who said the Force Design team will assess the theory of putting missile-warning satellites into non-traditional orbits.
Until the July 5 decision to postpone the undocking, the Cargo Dragon was to depart the ISS on July 6 at about 11 a.m. EDT with a 5,000-lb. return cargo for a parachute-assisted descent into the Atlantic Ocean on July 8 at 12 a.m. EDT.
Astronauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo completed the first extravehicular activity (EVA) outside the Tianhe core module, marking China’s first spacewalk since the Shenzhou-7 mission in 2008.
The docking of the Progress MS-17 cargo capsule to the Poisk module was a first, Progress freighters having previously docked at the Russian segment's Pirs module, which was disabled earlier this year.
If schedules hold, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will fly nine days ahead of fellow billionaire entrepreneur and space buff Jeff Bezos, founder and funder of Blue Origin.
NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter will attempt to overfly a region of key interest to scientists on the rover Perseverance mission, pushing ongoing flight demonstrations into the realm of operational mission support.
Wally Funk, one of 13 women recruited as potential astronauts for NASA’s 1960s Mercury program but sidelined due to gender, will fly as a guest of Blue Origin on the company’s first crewed flight.
The aging NEOWISE space telescope, which seeks out asteroids and comets including the many undiscovered objects that could pose an impact threat to the Earth, has had its life extended for two more years.
