Commercial Space

Virgin Galactic has completed post-flight inspections and root cause analysis of last month’s thwarted suborbital flight test of SpaceShipTwo, the company said on Jan. 7.

Germany joins race for European vertical smallsat launch competing with Norway, Sweden, Portugal and the UK.

Lawmakers trimmed $1.9 billion from the space agency budget in fiscal 2021.

The Space Development Agency has awarded SpaceX $150.4 million to launch up to 28 satellites for the Pentagon’s tracking and transport layers.

If successful, the deal bolsters Lockheed against large primes while providing the best outcome for AJR after overhaul in recent years.

Denver-based Voyager Space Holdings, Inc. plans to acquire a majority stake in XO Markets and its largest subsidiary, Houston-based Nanoracks, which earlier this month launched the commercial Bishop airlock to the International Space Station.

Axiom Space, the space station startup, on Dec. 22 announced plans to create a 14-acre headquarters campus at Houston Spaceport to train private astronauts and begin production of its Axiom Station.

Jaunt Air Mobility has signed a memorandum of understanding with propulsion developer VerdeGo Aero to study a hybrid-electric version of Jaunt’s planned Journey urban air taxi.

Nanoracks’ commercial airlock, which was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this month aboard the first launch of SpaceX’s upgraded cargo version of the Dragon capsule, has been successfully removed from the freighter’s unpressurized trunk and berthed to the port side of the orbital outpost’s U.S. segment Tranquility module.

The launch of 36 OneWeb satellites follows the company's emergence from bankruptcy.

The project could provide yet another opportunity for more retail-level investors to get in on the growing space economy.

Germany’s ambitions for a smallsat launch capability from the North Sea has prompted the formation of a consortium to develop a ship-launch capability.

NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract for launch services on its New Glenn rocket.

The Commercial Space Operations Center, now known as Comspoc, has formally split off as a standalone company from Analytical Graphics now that the latter has been acquired by Ansys.

Redwire, the private equity-backed space rollup, said Dec. 15 it bought LoadPath, a developer of payload adapters, deployable structures and thermal products for the space industry.

Iridium has officially launched its own Global Maritime Distress and Safety System service, providing a single terminal for emergency data and voice communications that company leaders said would be competitively priced.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have selected the initial trio of astronauts for the third of SpaceX’s commercial crew launches to the International Space Station, Crew-3, which is expected to launch in fall 2021.

U.S. back in human spaceflight business.

The launch marked the seventh for the mission's reusable Falcon 9 core stage.

Virgin Galactic’s attempt to make the first sub-orbital space flight from its Spaceport America base in New Mexico was thwarted on Dec 12. by an issue

British satellite operator Inmarsat has puts its very-high-throughput GX5 satellite into commercial service, boosting inflight broadband capacity for its commercial and business aircraft customers in Europe and the Middle East.

The U.S. director of national intelligence announced that the nation is creating an Intelligence Community Commercial Space Council, during a Dec. 9 meeting of the National Space Council.

A SpaceX Starship prototype, powered for the first time by a trio of liquid oxygen- and methane-burning Merlin engines, crashed during a landing

UK venture capital outfit Octopus Ventures and investment firm BGF joined existing Orbex investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Heartcore Capital and Elecnor S.A. in a new funding round for the launch company.

“The pandemic didn’t change plans, it simply fast-tracked what was already happening,” says a space industry executive.