NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (Capstone) small satellite successfully separated from its orbital Photon propulsion stage early July 4, beginning a pioneering journey to near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon.
OneWeb, in partnership with the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency, says it demonstrated a 5G link between low Earth orbit satellites, a geostationary satellite and a mobile ground terminal on June 28.
Startup launch company Relativity Space has signed a multiyear, multiflight launch services agreement with OneWeb to deliver its next-generation broadband satellites into orbit beginning in 2025.
Virgin Orbit is targeting September for the first of two launches this year from the UK’s new spaceport in Cornwall, a mission that will mark the first rocket launch from British soil and the first commercial launch from Western Europe.
Satellite communications equipment startup SatixFy, which is waiting to go public under a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deal, said June 23 David Ripstein will be its new CEO.
SpaceX kicked off a trio of launches planned for June 17-19 by sending another bank of Starlink satellites into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 booster making its13th flight, a new company record.
Three months after emerging from so-called stealth mode, Impulse Space Propulsion, an in-orbit transfer services company founded by SpaceX co-founder Tom Mueller, has added $10 million to its initial fundraising. Lux Capital, a venture capital firm focused on emerging science and technology ventures that is familiar to aerospace startups, is investing in Impulse, bringing the latter’s total raised to date to $30 million.
The flight, which marked the first time Roc had flown at altitudes required for effective launch trajectories of Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle, lasted just over three hours.
By Carole Rickard Hedden, Michael Bruno, Graham Warwick
For new space and advanced air mobility startups, the past two years have been a heady experience of investment, mergers with special purpose acquisition companies and high-risk plays into segments of the aerospace and defense industry that were mere dreams a decade ago. As the economy changes, Aviation Week editors discuss what comes next.
Launch startup Firefly Aerospace is rotating through another CEO as its recently installed private equity sponsors assert more control over the embattled new-space upstart.
Two companies aiming to improve inflight connectivity have carried out what they describe as the successful delivery of high-speed, low-latency inflight connectivity from a low-Earth-orbit satellite to a commercial airliner.
The Space Flight Laboratory deorbited its CanX-7 demonstration nanosatellite using four drag sails in April, five years after the sails were deployed and significantly sooner than it would have deorbited naturally.
SpaceX has some more work to do before it will receive U.S. clearance to launch Starship on an orbital flight test from Boca Chica Beach, Texas, the FAA has determined in its long-awaited study assessing the program’s environmental impacts.
NASA’s gamble on a startup launch company to deliver a pair of novel hurricane-probing cubesats into orbit got off to a rough start on June 12 after the upper stage of an Astra 3.3 rocket shut down early, dooming the first two members of the agency’s Tropics constellation.
Lockheed Martin has added Australian small satellite-maker Inovor Technologies under the so-called Hosted Missions Program for the JP9102 military satellite project.
The Russian government has cleared state-owned Roscosmos to sign a long-delayed agreement with NASA for cosmonauts to fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules in exchange for astronauts joining Russian Soyuz crews.
