Commercial Space

The Streamlined Launch and Reentry Licensing Requirements final rule allows commercial space operators to acquire a single license to conduct multiple launches from multiple sites.

Stockholm is planning to make investments in the planned launch site, near Kiruna in the north of the country, that would enable smallsat launch as early as 2022.

Rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts have been living aboard the orbital outpost for 20 years. Here are some other numbers behind the milestone.

Fifteen-nation program marks 20 years of continuous human presence in low Earth orbit.

The reserve could support perhaps 1,100 lunar personnel living and working permanently in the cislunar realm to grow a future $3 trillion annual space economy, ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno says.

The seven-year-old startup targeting end-of-life and debris-removal services for low Earth orbit satellites and beyond has landed $51 million in new venture capital from several investors.

It was the seventh flight of the booster and capsule, and the program’s 13th launch since the first New Shepard system debuted in April 2015.

The company is investigating an unexpected pressure rise in a Merlin 1D engine turbomachinery gas generator.

SpaceX is poised to take over ISS crew rotation missions, with Boeing to follow next year.

Momentus will become the next publicly traded new-space venture in early 2021, and the first self-described space infrastructure, upon closure of a deal announced Oct. 7 for blank-check company Stable Road Acquisition to buy the satellite orbit-mover startup.

Airbus is preparing for the launch of the first of four Pleiades Neo satellites, designed for improved resolution and more frequent revisits in Earth observation, and simultaneously working on a lower-cost generation.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 6 to put another batch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites into orbit.

Recovering, reflying SpaceX Falcon 9s will save Space Force $53 million.

Never have clouds, i.e., internet-based computing, been more welcome in the aerospace and defense industry.

Northrop’s new jammer; Chinook tests more powerful engine; Brazil accepts Gripen E; and the soft power of space.

Finland-based Iceye has closed an $87 million series C financing round to complete its planned 18-satellite constellation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellites and to build a U.S. manufacturing and engineering hub.

OneWeb has renegotiated its contract with Arianespace and plans to resume launching its broadband satellite network in December, pending court approval of its Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

Development of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H3 has slipped at least three months following the discovery of faults during testing of the

Former International Space Station commander and three-time shuttle astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria is heading back to orbit, this time as on-site personnel for Axiom Space’s first private mission to the ISS.

After 14 launches from New Zealand, Rocket Lab is close to staging its first Electron mission from U.S. soil, with the completion of a wet dress rehearsal at its new Wallops Island launch site, one of the final preflight milestones.

NASA is removing a planned secondary payload from the August 2022 launch of its Psyche asteroid probe, leaving a pair of small satellites without a piggyback ride to Mars.

The FAA’s plan to amend the collision-avoidance methodology it uses in licensing commercial space launches will support safer operations with more flexible launch windows as space at low Earth orbit becomes increasingly congested, the agency says.

Working with Nanoracks, LLC, NASA is about to mark a milestone in its push to transition oversight of human scientific research and tech development in low Earth orbit to the private sector as it sets its sights on the Moon and Mars.

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FAA is busier than it has ever been licensing commercial space launches, officials said Sept. 14.

Mars exploration advocates tackle racism and diversity.