NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion are big-government programs trying to keep pace in a marketplace increasingly dominated by commercial industry, meanwhile, the U.S. military is looking to build bridges to international partners, that same commercial industry and to the intelligence community.
Sierra Space is in discussions with the European Space Agency and German aerospace center DLR to extend existing partnerships covering crew access to the International Space Station to include new commercial vehicles.
U.S. Space Force, Space Command and the National Reconnaissance Office have signed a “protected defense” strategic framework to align their space warfighting efforts.
Aircraft and satellites are being used in a research campaign to measure methane being released as the permafrost thaws in regions north of the Arctic Circle.
Startup Astroscale’s ELSA-d orbital debris removal demonstration has accomplished its first key goal, with the servicer satellite showing how it would capture a defunct spacecraft.
Production of the first all-new and modernized RS-25 engines for NASA’s Space Launch System has begun in Aerojet Rocketdyne’s newly expanded Los Angeles manufacturing facility.
Startup Firefly Aerospace says plans remain on schedule to attempt the first launch of its two-stage Alpha rocket from Vandenburg SFB, California, on Sept. 2 following a successful static fire test in mid-August.
With support from a NASA Tipping Point technology development award, Mojave, California-based Masten is developing a suborbital aerospace testbed with an option for point-to-point payload transportation.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall plans to begin working now to incorporate the Space Development Agency (SDA) into the U.S. Space Force, a bureaucratic transition not scheduled until Oct. 1, 2022.
The continued operation of Russia’s segment of the International Space Station depends on the replacement of nearly 1,500 pieces of onboard equipment, according to a key advisory group for Russian space agency Roscosmos.
A pinched nerve in the neck of NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is the reason the agency has postponed his planned Aug. 24 spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Boeing Australia is hoping to leverage Boeing’s U.S. military satellite technologies as it competes with Airbus and Lockheed Martin to win a $3.5 billion contract to build Australia's next-generation military satellite communications system.
Virgin Orbit, the airborne small-satellite rocket launch upstart that announced its intent to go public Aug. 23, apparently will build and offer a fleet of Earth-observation and internet of things (IoT) satellites starting in 2023, according to investor materials.
Australia has approved a launch permit for tiSPACE, a Taiwanese rocket startup, to test launch its Hapith I rocket from the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex by the end of 2021.
Despite the worldwide pandemic, the global space economy grew 4.4% last year to reach $447 billion, with the commercial sector accounting for the bulk of the increase, a new Space Foundation report shows.
