Space

Paragon Space Development Corp. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Final Frontier Design as part of a joint financial effort to enhance future private spacesuit development for NASA and other spaceflight customers.

Virgin Orbit’s disappointing stock debut marks the end of the beginning of the special purpose acquisition company phenomenon.

Blue Origin is joining the U.S. military’s effort to possibly use rockets to transport people and cargo.

Flight controllers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore deployed the secondary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope on Jan. 5, as the list of critical reconfigurations to prepare the observatory for its unprecedented science mission neared completion.

NASA’s upcoming Artemis I mission will feature some familiar names and activities to those alive and well in the remote workplace realm.

AST SpaceMobile, a newly public company aiming to establish a space-based cellular broadband network for smartphones, has offered a peak inside its 85,000-ft.2 manufacturing headquarters in Midland, Texas.

French space agency’s invitation to use Kourou spaceport may help European microlauncher projects meet hoped-for high demand.

Flight controllers overseeing the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope breezed through the deployment and positioning of the observatory’s five-layer, tennis court-sized sunshield, completing what was considered the most technically complicated part of the mission ahead of schedule.

Completion of the key trial will represent a milestone in the protracted development of the medium- to heavy-lift launcher.

The European Space Agency has backed the Biden administration’s commitment to extending International Space Station operations through 2030.

Japan’s Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry Co. are planning a 2023 mission to launch what they claim to be the first orbiting wooden satellite.

Addman Engineering, the additive manufacturing rollup under private equity investor American Industrial Partners, has acquired Castheon, a refractory metals maker that has partnered with spacecraft-providing companies, the companies announced Jan. 3.

Large U.S. defense prime contractor L3Harris Technologies has reorganized to include just three main business divisions, with Aviation Systems and its top unit executive no longer part of the company’s structure.

After successfully unfurling the James Webb Space Telescope’s tennis court-sized sunshield, flight controllers on Jan. 3 completed tensioning three of the shield’s five diamond-shaped membranes.

The new Persei booster for Russia’s Angara 5A heavy rocket failed to deliver a dummy payload to its final geostationary orbit.

A 13-year project pays off with Brazil’s first hypersonic-speed flight test.

The reconfiguration of the James Webb Space Telescope continued on Dec. 30 with the removal of covers that protected the observatory’s delicate sunshield for launch, setting the stage for the deployment of a five-layer, tennis court-sized structure needed to passively cool the telescope for its science program.

“There’s 344 things that now have to work perfectly,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a post-launch interview.

NASA and Roscosmos continue to pursue an astronaut/cosmonaut crew exchange agreement for Soyuz and NASA Commercial Crew launches to the International Space Station.

A new Inmarsat I-6 F1 satellite was successfully put into orbit by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on Dec 23.

An Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket carrying the flagship James Webb Space Telescope was rolled out to launchpad ELA-3 at Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on Dec. 23 in preparation for liftoff at 7:20 a.m. EST on Dec. 25.

A Russian Progress propulsion module and instrument compartment that delivered the Prichal docking module to the International Space Station’s Russian-segment Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module departed the seven-person orbital science laboratory late Dec. 22 for a destructive atmospheric re-entry over the south Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX’s 24th NASA-contracted Dragon resupply capsule autonomously rendezvoused with and docked to the International Space Station’s (ISS) U.S. segment early Dec. 22.

The flagship James Webb Space Telescope has been cleared for a launch attempt this week aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket.

DARPA has selected Germany-based Mynaric to create an architectural design for the experimental laser communication terminals called for by the agency’s Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node (Space BACN) program.