Russia’s Europeanized Soyuz will lift a bevy of low-orbiting satellites on its first launch of 2016 from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
Startup spacecraft manufacturer OneWeb Satellites has selected an industrial park near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as home to a clean-sheet production facility that will crank out dozens of small broadband satellites each month.
Up to 24 UAVs are planned to fly simultaneously at six FAA-designated test sites across the U.S. on April 19, in the biggest test yet of NASA’s UAV traffic management (UTM) system.
Astronauts aboard the station plan to extend and pressurize the prototype for a fabric human habitation module to its full 13 ft. length and 10 1/2 ft. diameter in late May.
In the summer of 2015, Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, says the military created a threat-focused space enterprise vision while working on an ongoing analysis of alternatives on the future of protected satellite communications.
Astronauts can assemble observatories with apertures as large as 20 meters from large components delivered by the Space Launch System (SLS), according to Hubble servicing veteran John Grunsfeld.
The head of U.S. Air Force Space Command says it is true that the military would rather not carry the burden of helping anyone and everyone with collision avoidance and orbital analysis.
New Zealand-based space launch company Rocket Lab has completed the qualification of the second stage of the Electron launch vehicle which will be lofted from a newly constructed site on the east coast of the country’s North Island.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) acknowledges it faces a complex challenge as it strives to improve the quality and analysis as well as the timely acquisition and distribution of the environmental data it traditionally gathers and distributes to enhance weather forecasting by opening a door for the commercial sector.
Global cooperation will be required to launch an interstellar reconnaissance mission to the nearest solar system, using a powerful laser beam to propel tiny “nanocraft” to relativistic speeds. But the technology exists or is expected to be available within several years, according to Internet investor Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives program.
As Senior Space Editor Frank Morring says, companies are looking for "pots of gold" in space. That gold could come from commercial efforts that would extend the life of the International Space Station or to mine water from the Moon. Civilian space agencies might benefit as well—working with each other to reach the Moon and ultimately charting a path to Mars. Frank joins Mark Carreau and Jen DiMascio at the annual space symposium in Colorado Springs and discuss the latest efforts to explore—and profit from—outer space.
The European Space Agency's director general believes a “Moon Village," open to all, has a better chance of combining global resources for the more challenging and expensive push to Mars.
Space-policy panelists at the annual Space Symposium here used the nascent satellite-servicing industry as an example of the problems that arise when technology outstrips government oversight and regulation.
Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) is proposing legislation to tackle a broad range of space issues, foremost is ending the use of the Defense Department to manage space traffic.
