Commercial Space

Spanish startup PLD Space says it is completing critical design reviews of its Miura 5 launcher as it works toward a somewhat delayed first flight next year.

iRocket reports a successful flight test of the company’s 2.75-in. IRX-100 version of the Hydra 70 rocket system.

Today’s satellites are cheaper, but hardly cheap. The CEO of a propulsion supplier joins us to explain why.

Earth Observation company Planet is developing a new satellite it calls “Owl” to provide near-daily, 1-meter class imagery, the company announced Oct. 7.

The U.S. Space Force expects to launch the next Space Development Agency (SDA) mission on Oct. 14 from Vandenberg SFB, California, with six backup windows available, Space Launch Delta (SLD) 30 said Oct. 8.

NASA has contracted Momentus to use its Vigoride orbital service vehicle as a testbed to demonstrate a rotating detonation rocket engine in space in 2026.

Stoke Space has raised $510 million in a Series D funding round led by US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT).

Dark, a French startup developing a vehicle for the capture of low-Earth-orbit objects, has ceased operations, the company announced Oct. 8.

Russian uncrewed aircraft maker Geoscan has revealed plans to launch satellite constellations for Earth mapping and communication services.

Liftoff of New Shepard with six international crewmembers took place under a partly cloudy sky at Launch Site One near Van Horn in West Texas at 9:40 a.m. EDT.

Blue Origin will build a new payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral SFS, Florida, under a U.S. Space Force contract announced Oct. 7.

The chairman of the FCC wants to streamline the licensing process for satellite and Earth station applications to help businesses.

Progress in reducing small-satellite costs will come from the discipline to know which expenses buy reliability and which just keep us stuck in the past.

Cubesat projects are creating career paths for students while helping companies find engineers with experience in space technology and other disciplines.

The U.S. Space Force has assigned five future missions to SpaceX and two missions to United Launch Alliance (ULA).

Jeff Bezos, executive chairman of Amazon.com and founder of Blue Origin, foresees gigawatt data centers orbiting Earth in the coming decades.

Lockheed Martin is developing business plans and strategies to offer commercial flight services of the Orion deep-space capsule.

Lockheed Martin and Spark Capital-backed Inversion reaffirmed its plan for a first flight of its Arc space-based, on-demand cargo delivery vehicle next year.

The U.S. Space Force’s next neighborhood watchdog spacecraft could be the first operational system capable of on-orbit refueling.

T-Mobile’s satellite-based cellular service, provided by SpaceX’s Starlink, now supports data for a variety of smartphone apps, including video chat software.

Intuitive Machines (IM), Inc., a space technology and services company, has announced the completion of its acquisition of KinetX Inc.

Blue Origin plans to launch a lunar resource mapping spacecraft to help identify opportunities to exploit materials available on the Moon.

A UAE-led medical study recently headed into space aboard Axiom Mission 4. The private mission, which launched on June 25, was led by veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson, adding to her standing record for the longest cumulative time in space by an American astronaut.

Axiom Space unveiled a pilot program to provide personalized training for prospective human spaceflight participants interested in doing microgravity research.

Famous automotive manufacturers bet on space, electric air taxis and hydrogen power.