After successfully launching a 34-satellite rideshare mission from New Zealand, a Rocket Lab helicopter crew snared the returning first-stage booster mid-air for the first time, then released the rocket into the ocean for retrieval by ship.
French satellite startup Prométhée has contracted with NanoAvionics to build a hyperspectral nanosatellite demonstrator. The ProtoMéthée-1 will be based on NanoAvionics’ 16U nanosatellite bus M16P and would be a forerunner to plans to launch a 20-satellite constellation by 2025, Prométhée said on April 29.
Several venture capital firms and the related office at Lockheed Martin have teamed to invest $27 million in X-Bow Systems, an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based additive manufacturing startup targeting production of solid rocket energetics.
Hours after a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule returned from a privately financed sortie to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA cleared the company to proceed with a launch attempt at 3:52 a.m. EDT on April 27 to deliver the next resident crew to the orbital outpost.
Capella Space has raised $97 million through a Series C financing round that it plans to spend on further developing its automated image analysis software and next-generation satellites.
A prolonged, privately financed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) ended on April 25 with the return of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule chartered by Houston-based Axiom Space.
Planet Labs has unveiled its next constellation of 32 Earth observation satellites, the Pelican fleet, which will provide images with up to 30 cm of resolution and improved revisit rates.
Weather concerns off the Florida coast have prompted new delays in the planned return to Earth of Axiom-1 from the International Space Station and the follow-on launch of NASA’s Crew-4 SpaceX Dragon Freedom to the ISS, NASA and Axiom Space announced late April 20.
NASA selected six U.S. satellite communications providers on April 20 to develop and demonstrate near-Earth space communication services to support future agency missions as part of the Communications Services Project.
Astrobotic unveiled the flight model of its Peregrine lunar lander on April 20, the version that is scheduled to fly to the Moon in the fourth quarter of 2022 on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket.
Venturi Astrolab, which last month unveiled its Flex rover family for manned Moon and Mars missions, is buying certain technologies from European electric vehicle maker Venturi Group, with which it has a “strategic partnership” and a shared name.
Boryung Pharmaceutical, Starburst and Axiom Space have launched a “Care in Space Challenge,” an annual competition with a $1 million shared prize to find next-generation pharmaceutical, bioscience and medical technologies to be developed in space.
As their nearly six-month mission to the International Space Station draws to a close, four NASA SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts praised their experience with Axiom-1, the first U.S. all-private astronaut mission to the ISS, and predicted there will be more missions to come.
