Space

The long-awaited crewed debut of Boeing’s Starliner caps off a 13-year effort to certify multiple commercial providers of low-Earth-orbit astronaut transport.

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

NASA’s inspector general has identified a range of technical issues of concern that arose during the uncrewed 2022 Artemis I mission.

Startup Danti has raised $5 million to further develop its natural language processing satellite image search engine.

The three NASA Crew-8 astronauts and their Russian cosmonaut colleague undocked their SpaceX Dragon capsule from the ISS and redocked on May 2.

NASA on May 1 selected nine companies for a dozen concept studies aimed at expanding the exploration of Mars.

Launch is planned for 10:34 p.m. EDT on May 6 atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral.

The company plans to issue 20.8 million shares, with an offering price to be posted on May 27, according to a financial filing with the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The country is shaking up space exploration, commerce and the broader geopolitical picture.

Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman remain on track to debut the new Antares 330 launch vehicle in 2025.

The U.S. SDA awarded Millennium Space Systems a $413 million contract to build a prototype network of fire-control quality sensing satellites.

Earlier this year, NASA announced a rescheduling of the Artemis II and Artemis III missions.

European satellite communications provider SES is to buy U.S.-based rival Intelsat in a bid to tackle competition from other low-Earth-orbit services.

SpaceX's resupply mission to the ISS, CRS-30, returned early April 30 with a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.

SpaceX took on the mission of delivering two new members of Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system into orbit on April 28.

John Bailey, a 25-year veteran of NASA Stennis Space Center operations, has been named director of the Bay St. Louis, Mississippi-based rocket engine test facility.

Hanwha Systems has broken ground on its new Jeju Hanwha Space Center, a purpose-built South Korea facility for the manufacturing and testing of satellites.

The Dragon resupply mission undocking on April 28 from the ISS Harmony module's zenith docking port should enable a relocation of the Crew 8 Dragon capsule.

L3Harris (LHX) posted better-than-expected results in the first quarter.

The 10-min. laser transmission while the Psyche spacecraft was 140 million mi. (226 million km) from Earth, occurred on April 8.

NASA and Boeing on April 25 completed the Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the long-awaited CST-100 Starliner crewed flight test (CFT).

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has selected Astroscale to remove an upper-stage rocket body from orbit.

Early in the spacewalk, the two cosmonauts were working more than 2 hr. ahead of schedule and urging Russian flight controllers to plan a third spacewalk for them.

The Shetland Islands’ SaxaVord spaceport has secured a range control license from the UK’s aviation regulator in another step toward the first orbital launches from the site.

China successfully sent the Shenzhou-18 crewed spacecraft into orbit April 25.