Under a Space Act Agreement with NASA, space company Virgin Galactic is to develop a training program for private astronaut missions to the International Space Station.
Startup Space Perspective is looking to early 2021 to begin test flights of a high-altitude balloon with a pressurized capsule from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), with an eye toward carrying commercial passengers and research payloads.
Chinese scientists have taken a large step toward a theoretically secure communication technology, demonstrating quantum key distribution (QKD) between ground stations via a satellite.
With the support of a newly appointed associate administrator, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has expressed confidence that his agency can achieve an accelerated return to the Moon’s surface with human explorers by 2024.
While the first electric air taxi prototypes are already flying on available lithium-ion batteries, developers are hoping for significant advances in energy storage to squeeze more performance out of their vehicles.
By Jen DiMascio, Graham Warwick, Steve Trimble, Guy Norris
From a competition among the world’s militaries to create weapons that can hit targets 1,000 mi. away within minutes, to innovations that could enable rapid civilian travel from New York to Hong Kong and multi-stage access to space, the pursuit of hypersonic technologies are pushing the limits of national budgets and the laws of physics.
