Space

Faced with cost, schedule and technical challenges, NASA is seeking proposals from the commercial sector for a new generation of spacesuits.

William Shatner, the Canadian actor whose portrayal of Capt. James T. Kirk in the 1966-69 television show Star Trek brought depictions of space exploration to millions of households, will get a real taste of space as a guest passenger aboard Blue Origin’s next New Shepard suborbital flight.

Engineers from NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne have completed the second in a series of Space Launch System (SLS) rocket engine tests for the production of the advanced RS-25 liquid hydrogen and oxygen engines assigned to human missions to the Moon beyond Artemis IV.

Landsat 9 builds on a half-century legacy of Earth observations from space.

Japanese carmaker plans to fly prototype hybrid-electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing air taxi in 2023.

SpaceX’s 23rd NASA-contracted Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station splashed down under parachute in the ocean waters off Florida’s Atlantic coast near St. Augustine late Sept. 30, returning a 4,600-lb. cargo that included time-sensitive scientific research.

U.S. startup Launchspace Technologies has signed a contract with Airbus to test its orbital debris remediation and spacecraft shielding technology for 12 months on the Bartolomeo external platform on the International Space Station.

U.S. satellite servicing startup Starfish Space has raised $7 million in funding to develop its planned Otter space tug.

SpaceX’s 23rd NASA-contracted Dragon resupply mission capsule departed the International Space Station early Sept. 30 and headed for a late-night splashdown in the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico waters off the Florida peninsula with a 4,200-lb. return cargo, including time-sensitive science experiments.

The facility reports directly to the Republic of Korea Air Force's chief of staff and is designed to act as a coordinating agency for domestic civilian and military space units as well as foreign space counterparts such as the U.S. Space Force.

The FAA on Sept. 29 signed off on Virgin Galactic’s plan to improve communications with the FAA during flight operations of SpaceShipTwo and request a larger zone of protected airspace to ensure violations, such as what occurred during its last flight on July 11, do not reoccur.

Eutelsat Communications confirmed Sept. 29 it had received an “unsolicited, preliminary” takeover proposal from billionaire Patrick Drahi but that his terms were not good enough.

The flagship James Webb Space Telescope has begun its 14-day journey from the coast of California through the Panama Canal to the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, program scientist Eric Smith told NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee on Sept. 29.

A half-dozen NASA Mars rovers, landers and orbiters will cease or in some cases curtail their transmission and reception of data with Earth as the Solar System’s two most hospitable planets experience a two-week, once-every-two-year solar conjunction beginning Oct. 2.

Three International Space Station crewmembers inaugurated spacecraft dockings at the orbital lab’s new Russian segment Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module on Sept. 28 as they separated from the 11-year-old Rassvet Mini Research Module-1 in their Soyuz MS-18 to redock at Nauka.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out a long-term strategy for the UK to become a leading nation in space.

The U.S. Space Force is investing $24.35 million in Rocket Lab’s new medium-lift Neutron booster, with emphasis on the rocket’s upper stage for possible use in the National Security Space Launch program.

Blue Origin plans to fly its second group of passengers to suborbital space on Oct. 12.

Privately owned Terran Orbital plans to invest $300 million to build a factory at Kennedy Space Center capable of producing 1,000 small satellites per year.

Landsat 9, the latest satellite in a long-running Earth observation collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Department of Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey, was successfully launched on Sept. 27 from a foggy Vandenberg Space Force Station, California.

Isotropic Systems, a British flat-panel satellite antenna systems maker backed by Boeing and venture capitalists, says it has landed $37 million in fresh funding, enough to fully fund development of its multibeam ground antenna through expected product launch in 2022.

Astraius wants to use a Boeing C-17 airlifter to conduct horizontal launch of its Hera II two-stage launch vehicle, which is an adaptation of the Hera target missile used by the U.S. Defense Department to test missile defense systems.

The space agency has led understanding of climate change, but its facilities are vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather.

Astroscale Japan has selected Rocket Lab to launch the first step in a two-part mission to demonstrate the removal of a large piece of space debris from low Earth orbit.

Landsat 9, the latest in a half-century of overlapping NASA/U.S. Geological Survey satellites focused on monitoring changes to the planet’s surface and natural resources, is planned for a Sept. 27 launch.