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.
SpaceX plans to evaluate a new dimming feature called VisorSat for its growing global constellation of Starlink broadband connectivity satellites, whose disruptive brightness in the night sky has raised the ire of professional and amateur astronomers.
With preparations for SpaceX’s first human spaceflight drawing to a close, the company's President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell talks with Aviation Week & Space Technology space editor Irene Klotz about lessons learned for Starship and plans for the rollout of Starlink.
The Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands has performed its first unmanned air system delivery to a ship in a demonstration that could reduce pressures on the transport network around Europe’s largest seaport.
SpaceX is looking to shave development time for Starship crewed flights to less than half of the six years it has taken to get the Falcon 9-Dragon system ready to fly people for the first time.
Space company Virgin Orbit is reviewing telemetry data from the first LauncherOne launch vehicle orbital test flight attempt, which was terminated after an anomaly occurred shortly after launch May 25.
