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.
NASA completed a two-day Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the Demo-2 test mission, confirming a launch attempt on May 27 for SpaceX’s first human spaceflight and NASA’s first launch of astronauts on a U.S. system since 2011.
Launch service companies could be given the discretion to decide the optimal launch plan to support the 30 satellites in Tranche 0 of the Space Development Agency’s future military surveillance and communications architecture in low Earth orbit, the agency said May 20.
British satellite launcher firm Skyrora has undertaken a full static fire test of its Skylark-L rocket, the first test of this scale since the UK’s Black Arrow program 50 years ago.
NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 20 for final preparations ahead of launch next week to test SpaceX’s Crew Dragon system.
Boeing, which was shut out of nearly $1 billion of NASA funding to develop human-class lunar landers, said it does not plan to protest the awards, which went to teams led by Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX.
Two days before he was to chair the Flight Readiness Review for the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, marking the return of U.S. human orbital flight capability, NASA Associate Administrator Douglas Loverro is leaving the agency.
Citing concerns about Tropical Storm Arthur, which was passing off the coast of North Carolina on May 18, SpaceX is standing down from its planned May 19 launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to build out its Starlink network, putting the long-awaited flight test of a crewed Dragon spacecraft next on the launch schedule.
Virgin Orbit completed a second dress rehearsal of its LauncherOne small satellite launch system on May 15, but plans to conduct some additional testing ahead of the vehicle’s orbital test flight, targeted for later this month.
The satellite operator Intelsat announced May 13 that it has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a financial restructuring to free up liquidity and continue operations while it awaits repayment from the government from an auction of C-band spectrum.
Listen to your experts, listen to your vehicle, and expect the unexpected. That’s the advice a panel of human spaceflight veterans has for SpaceX as the company prepares for its landmark Demo-2 flight to the International Space Station (ISS) later this month, which will restore the U.S. human orbital spaceflight capability lost after the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle.
