An upgraded SpaceX cargo Dragon 2 capsule reached orbit on Dec. 6 with 3.2 tons of equipment and supplies for the International Space Station (ISS), including a new commercially owned and operated airlock module.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully recovered the small Hayabusa 2 asteroid sample return capsule in the remote Woomera region of Australia.
The House and Senate fiscal 2021 defense authorization compromise bill agrees that the future service acquisition executive for space systems may delegate milestone decision authority to a program executive officer for U.S. Space Force major defense acquisition programs.
The House and Senate fiscal 2021 defense policy compromise bill would require an independent assessment of the U.S. Army’s plans for the CH-47F Block II upgrade.
Overall FMS transactions in 2020 declined by 8% compared to the previous year’s mark of $55.4 billion, and by 8.77% from a modern peak of $55.66 billion set by the Trump administration in 2018.
The fiscal 2021 defense policy compromise bill would require the U.S. cost assessment and program evaluation office at the Pentagon to conduct an independent assessment of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System product lines.
Aerospace and defense supplier Curtiss-Wright announced Dec. 3 that Lynn Bamford, currently president of the company’s Defense and Power Segments, will become CEO on Jan. 1 under a planned transition that sees current CEO and Chairman David Adams retiring by May 2022.
The German business of missile manufacturer MBDA said it has been forced to undertake a restructuring after the German government again delayed plans to contract a new ground-based air defense system.
An autonomous control system supplied from DARPA’s Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program commanded the live and simulated Avengers as a single, distributed system.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have revised their bilateral arrangement to cover the certification of aviation innovations such as eVTOL aircraft.
A conference agreement by the House and Senate calls for a Pentagon-level review of the U.S. Air Force's strategy for the Next Generation Air Dominance program and criticizes the Navy's plans as "significantly immature."
The U.S. National Commission on Military Aviation Safety is recommending that Congress mandate and fund a Joint Safety Council that would report to the deputy defense secretary and coordinate the military’s safety centers risk mitigation efforts, a new report released Dec. 3 says.
NASA has awarded four companies contracts to collect samples of lunar regolith, then transfer ownership to the agency, not for return to Earth necessarily but to expand the legal and regulatory framework for commercial space activities on the Moon and beyond.
Whether Puerto Rico’s venerable Arecibo Observatory will be replaced after being heavily damaged by multiple support cable failures rests in the hands of Congress and the space science community, according to Ralph Gaume, director of the National Science Foundation’s astronomical sciences division.
Aspiring small satellite launch service and logistics provider Aevum has unveiled an 80-ft.-long, 60-ft. wingspan unmanned aircraft system to serve as the reusable first stage of a three-stage, autonomous launch system that aims to cut costs and dramatically reduce the time needed to plan and execute missions.
The European Investment Bank, the long-term lending institution of the European Union, announced Dec. 3 that it could invest up to €20 million ($24.3 million) in Spire Global, a Luxembourg-registered nanosatellite operator for cloud-enabled data analytics, marking the European institution’s first direct new-space venture.
A request for information published on Dec. 2 by the U.S. Army’s product manager for Enhanced Radar, Optics and Sensors seeks payloads that can be integrated in time for the MQ-1C to participate in a Joint All-Domain Operations demonstration event.
Axiom Space, selected by NASA to berth the first element of an eventual commercial low Earth orbit-crewed free flyer at the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024, has significantly upgraded the architecture of its planned Axiom Station, providing an initial four-person crew capability.
