Hours after SpaceX delivered a batch of satellites into polar orbits from Florida—previously an exclusive West Coast route—Virgin Orbit pulled off the reverse feat: deploying its customers’ spacecraft into 45-deg. inclination orbits from the California-launched LauncherOne rocket.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Jan. 13 to deliver 105 satellites into a near-polar Sun-synchronous orbits, successfully completing its third discounted rideshare flight.
Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company that helped sweep in the current era of startup space companies quickly going public, shocked investors Jan. 13 with news it will raise as much as $500 million by issuing new debt.
The Airbus-sponsored Perlan 2 stratospheric glider will carry a Thales FlytLink satellite communications terminal when it returns to flight, enabling real-time data downloads from altitudes exceeding 90,000 ft.
Hypersonix Launch Systems has signed a collaborative agreement with the University of Sydney to research and manufacture key components of its proposed spaceplane, including its Spartan scramjet propulsion system.
Russia’s launch manifest for 2022 includes 30 launches, a 20% increase over 2021, Dmitry Rogozin, CEO of the Russian State Space Corp. Roscosmos, said on Jan. 12.
NASA has reached an “inflection point” as it prepares to reach out sustainably to the Moon, Mars and other deep space destinations with human explorers, a steep and risky slope, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel says.
NASA’s astronaut corps, currently historically lean, is so structured around International Space Station (ISS) operations that it may not be prepared to deal with attrition and reassignments as it faces numerous challenges, the agency’s inspector general says.
NASA will strive for a closer relationship between its climate science activities and its other research and technology pursuits—whether they be human space exploration or aeronautics—with this week’s appointment of a new combination chief scientist and senior climate advisor, Administrator Bill Nelson told a Jan. 11 news briefing.
Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, will be the base for several micro-launchers, which will help the European industry progress in reusability, according to Philippe Baptiste, chairman and CEO of French space agency CNES.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has encountered another “small” obstacle in its campaign to collect and cache samples of rocky materials from the floor of the red planet.
Two weeks after the JWST was launched into orbit, the final segment of its 21-ft.-dia. primary mirror—the largest mirror ever flown on a space observatory—was rotated into position, completing NASA’s risky and most technically complicated series of in-space deployments.
Flight controllers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore are closing in on the final steps to reconfigure the James Webb Space Telescope, with the first of two primary mirror wing panels extended and latched into place on Jan. 7.
The Space Force’s two launch ranges have a shortage of spare parts for critical systems, which could impact future launches as the service projects a vast increase in missions, a new Pentagon report says.
After contributing 31 flights to a global record 146 orbital launches in 2021, SpaceX kicked off the new year by adding another 49 new satellites to its growing Starlink broadband network.
