Top U.S. officials seek to balance the use of government-made spy satellites with new commercial developments in imagery and intelligence collection and analysis.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is slated to launch a classified U.S. National Reconnaissance Office payload next year in an arrangement that appears to have been brokered by a third party.
Future times are upon us, with everything from advanced data analysis to robots gone rogue discussed at the opening of The Washington Post’s new conference center.
NASA is using data it has collected from orbit and the Martian surface to seek “exploration zones” that encompass all of the features that would make up a successful human mission—a safe landing zone near water supplies that could be mined for oxygen and rocket propellant.
NASA stands to gain plenty for itself by helping SpaceX get to Mars. An amended Space Act Agreement makes clear the agency can use whatever it learns to land its own vehicles on Mars, it just can’t share it with any of SpaceX’s competitors.
Governments are looking for ways to work around disruptions in service, increasingly caused by proliferating equipment that can jam and spoof GPS signals.
As the International Space Station approaches the end of its service life, NASA is supporting Boeing and SpaceX efforts to build commercial crew vehicles that can take crew to the ISS and later commercial space stations. Listen is as our editors discuss those efforts.
NASA on Red Dragon Mars mission: “This is a technology demonstration of what we consider to be one of the most critical technologies for us to get humans to Mars.”
A challenging timetable has SpaceX running at top speed on preparations for upcoming flights to the International Space Station with the Crew Dragon, the human-rated version of the company’s cargo-carrying Dragon spacecraft.
The company must complete a rigorous series of tests this year and next to begin collecting fares in 2018 under its five-year, $4.2 billion NASA Commercial Crew Transportation Capability deal.
The initial group of astronauts selected to fly on commercial missions to the International Space Station are providing input about human-factors engineering to Boeing and SpaceX.
The space agency is pleased with the progress of the post-space-shuttle commercial approach to developing the spacecraft that will allow it to begin flying astronauts from U.S. soil again.
NASA engineers will regularly brief U.S. companies on their progress in developing techniques for on-orbit satellite servicing, hoping to spin the technology off into the private sector as quickly as possible.
