The Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, French national space center CNES and Airbus have inked a letter of intent to cooperate on Earth-observation satellites, including development of VNREDSat-2.
Equipped with emerging propulsion and navigation technologies, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test is intended to demonstrate for the first time the potential effectiveness of a kinetic impact strategy in deflecting an asteroid on a destructive collision course with Earth.
Three-year-old New York startup Innovative Rocket Technologies on Nov. 4 said it has signed an agreement with two-year-old Turion Space of Irvine, California, to launch 20 of the latter’s proposed Droid orbital-debris-removing satellites to low Earth orbit via iRocket’s planned Shockwave launcher.
The acquisition broadens CACI’s capabilities as a U.S.-based FSO laser communications provider supporting space, airborne and terrestrial missions to U.S. government and commercial customers.
The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office on Nov. 3 released a request for proposals to industry for the Electro-Optical Commercial Layer, a step for improved commercial imagery with a specific focus on intelligence and military needs.
The U.S. military needs to develop more offensive capabilities in space, coupled with beefing up defenses for critical satellites, to maintain superiority in that domain as China rapidly closes the gap, the nation’s top uniformed military official warned.
UK startup Isotropic Systems has demonstrated the first simultaneous connections with communications satellites in different orbits, its solid-state terminal linking to SES spacecraft in both geostationary and medium Earth orbits at the same time.
Assuming a successful Dec. 18 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana atop an Ariane 5 rocket, the many thousands of experts who have worked on the $9.7 billion mission will have to hold their breath for another six months before the world’s most technically complex space observatory reaches its final orbit, fully deploys and checks out.
Recently public new-space company Redwire is buying Techshot, a microgravity biotechnology company that provided the first U.S. system capable of manufacturing human tissue in microgravity, among other innovations.
The U.S. Space Force’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office is planning to release 20 solicitations to industry for commercially provided satellite services over the next year—starting with nine requests for proposals in the next two months.
A crew medical concern has joined a weather issue in delaying the anticipated launch of NASA’s SpaceX-contracted Crew 3 Dragon mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) until Nov. 6 at the earliest.
Spurred by rising space business opportunities, reinsurance and risk management service provider Applied Underwriters on Nov. 1 said it was taking on former PartnerRe Direct and Facultative Space staff for a new Washington-based joint venture called Applied Underwriters Aerospace.
Amazon said Nov. 1 it will launch the KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 prototype satellites for its low Earth orbit-based broadband offering via two ABL Space Systems RS1 rockets from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in a year.
Launched late Oct. 27 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz 2a.1 rocket, the MS-18 freighter—designated Progress 79 by NASA—docked to the ISS on Oct. 29 at 9:31 p.m. EDT.
The planned SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon launch of four U.S. and European astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) has been delayed to early Nov. 3 from Oct. 31 due to predicted rough winds and sea conditions along the flight corridor off the U.S. East Coast.
NASA and Russian’s space agency are about a year away from implementing a flight crew swap agreement, Kathy Lueders, the agency’s associate administrator for space operations, told an Oct. 29 Crew-3 preflight news briefing.
Small-satellite startup Terran Orbital, backed by Lockheed Martin and others, plans to become a publicly traded company after a reverse merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, the companies announced late Oct. 28.
As NASA’s Commercial Crew initiative matures, it is accelerating the turnaround of timely science experiments and technology development related to the future human exploration of the Moon and Mars, researchers say.
Small-satellite startup Terran Orbital, backed by Lockheed Martin and others, plans to become a publicly traded company after a reverse merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, the companies announced late Oct. 28.
