A wave of space startups suddenly going public in SPAC deals is revving up an already excited sector. But one of them is ahead of others and is about to take another giant leap.
NASA has awarded Northrop Grumman a sole-source contract worth up to $84.5 million to provide the two-stage ascent vehicle needed to launch samples from the surface of Mars into Mars orbit, where they can be retrieved by a return ship and flown back to Earth.
NASA is bumping the upcoming reflight of Boeing’s uncrewed CST-100 Starliner spacecraft until sometime after the arrival of four astronauts aboard SpaceX’s second operational Crew Dragon taxi flight to the International Space Station.
One of five RCAF C-150s, a military derivative of the A310, rejoined the fleet, the RCAF announced in a March 4 Tweet. The aircraft, which also is used as a VIP transport, was damaged in 2019 while being towed into a hangar.
Red 6, a California startup aiming to provide air combat training with augmented reality technology, has landed $7 million in new funding and signed former U.S. Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper to its advisory board.
Nine hours after a SpaceX team in Texas landed a full-scale Starship prototype for the first time, colleagues in Florida launched a Falcon 9 rocket with 60 more satellites for the company’s high-speed internet service system.
Belgian politicians are set to question the country’s need to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter after the chief of the U.S. Air Force announced plans for studies into its future force mix and a potential clean-sheet fighter design to replace the F-16.
SpaceX’s March 3 high-altitude test of a full-scale Starship prototype managed a soft landing—unlike two previous test vehicles—but then exploded 3 min. after touching down at the company’s facility in Boca Chica Beach, Texas.
Thales Alenia Space (TAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed the expected contract for six satellites in the second generation of the EU’s Galileo navigation constellation, after the Court of Justice of the European Union lifted a suspension.
Startup Venus Aerospace plans to proceed with the development, testing and production of a small hypersonic aircraft capable of transporting a dozen passengers or time-critical payloads between major continental destinations in an hour.
NASA plans an industry day on March 9 for the Electrified Power train Flight Demonstration project to flight test megawatt-class electric aircraft propulsion systems.
