Kratos Defense & Security Solutions will acquire CPI ASC Signal Division from Communications & Power Industries for $35 million in cash, in a deal that further guarantees the U.S. government at least two major providers of key satellite communications technology.
DARPA has awarded Blue Canyon Technologies a $14.2 million contract to provide commercial satellite buses for the Blackjack program to demonstrate a military constellation of autonomous satellites in low Earth orbit connected by a high-speed network.
Fresh off a major milestone in a difficult 10-year effort by NASA to establish a U.S. commercial capability to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), Kathy Lueders has taken over leadership of an accelerated effort by the agency to return human explorers to the Moon’s surface in 2024.
After an 11-week hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rocket Lab resumed launch operations on June 13 by successfully launching a payload of small satellites for NASA, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the University of New South Wales Canberra Space into low Earth orbit.
Representatives from the three commercial Human Lander System developers recently chosen by NASA to shuttle future astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface are expressing confidence that their efforts can help the agency achieve the White House goal of returning to the Moon with astronauts in 2024 and establishing a sustainable presence.
NASA has awarded Astrobotic a $199.5 million contract to deliver the Volatiles Investigation Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s south pole in 2023, where it will search for water ice deposits that could be useful to future astronauts.
The director of the White House National Space Council believes NASA’s push to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024 is helping the agency significantly streamline its decision-making, though there’s more to do.
The design concept for the habitation and logistics elements of the lunar-orbiting Gateway that NASA is pursuing under a $187 million contract with Northrop Grumman has a significant heritage in the evolving Cygnus resupply mission spacecraft that have so far launched and berthed successfully to the International Space Station 13 times since September 2013.
The U.S. arm of Japanese satellite servicing startup Astroscale is expanding into geostationary orbit by acquiring the assets of Israeli company Effective Space Solutions.
“It’s truly a critical moment in the development of the space economy and a new era of private human spaceflight,” NASDAQ’s president and CEO said just before the astronauts rang the bell in the station’s U.S. segment.
“Things worked exactly the way we expected them to work," Demo-2 astronaut Doug Hurley said. " It’s a pretty awe-inspiring trip so far, pretty humbling,”
“I’m very confident that we’ll continue to fund NASA and fund NASA aggressively,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said shortly after SpaceX's Demo-2 mission successfully docked with the International Space Station.
The 3:22 p.m. liftoff marked SpaceX’s first launch with people aboard and the first U.S. human orbital launch since the final STS-135 shuttle mission in July 2011.
NASA’s return to flying astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station, delayed on May 27 due to weather constraints, has required the FAA to impose temporary flight restrictions (TFR) in the launch area that it has not used since the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.
NASA and SpaceX are retargeting launch of the crewed Demo-2 flight test for 3:22 p.m. EDT May 30 after dicey weather at Kennedy Space Center prompted a scrub 16 min. before a liftoff attempt on May 27.
