Space

An uprated engine and other enhancements to the Falcon 9 rocket will give SpaceX the ability to continue lifting commercial satellites to GEO while testing reusability of the launcher’s core stage. But it could require additional efforts to certify the vehicle for government missions.

Truck-stopping laser; Lockheed backs Rocket Lab smallsat booster; quantum radar entangles microwaves and optics; CMCs feel the heat in GE engine tests; Kalashnikov buys into Russian UAV maker, and other unmanned news.

NASA’s Dawn asteroid-belt probe has used its solar-electric propulsion system to achieve orbit around Ceres.

CEOs are often unprepared for their myriad challenges. Pressure to consolidate across borders could ratchet up the pressure.

U.S. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) took nearly a month to openly acknowledge to the press that one of the country’s oldest satellites fragmented into 43 pieces in orbit last month, creating a debris field.

CETel and satellite operator ARABSAT are stepping into the extended C-band with their jointly built earth station, offering unprecedented business expansion possibilities with the launch of teleport facilities, network and broadband services as well as solution design across the whole African continent, Middle East, Europe and Central Asia on board ARABSATs state-of-the-art satellite Arabsat-5C on 20 degrees East.

Three spacecraft, with a fourth to follow, are exploring frozen worlds that may explain the origin of life on Earth.

Kremlin bloviating notwithstanding, both the U.S. and Russia understand that human-spaceflight cooperation is a buffer against hostility.

Watch Mark Carreau interview NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Terry Virts aboard the International Space Station.

Six DMSP satellites are now left to provide the weather data needed for the military.

Russia plans to end its participation in the International Space Station after 2024, and develop its own national space station in low Earth orbit.

Complex constellation of four spacecraft will characterize what happens when magnetospheres collide.

Long-delayed NASA James Webb Space Telescope to run tests of critical instruments this summer.

Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Marion Blakey is leaving her position to become CEO and president of RRNA at the company’s Reston, Virginia, headquarters, and chair its U.S. board of directors.

To fulfill its NASA contract to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, the company says it is on track with plans to use a United Launch Alliance Atlas V to lift its next Cygnus pressurized cargo carrier to the station this fall.

Why NASA needs an Asteroid Deflection Technology Development program, rather than an Asteroid Redirect Mission.

President Barack Obama has vowed that the U.S. would be “pushing out into the Solar System, not just to visit, but to stay.”

In the future, most astronauts will select themselves, largely on the basis of their ability to buy a ticket.

Seeing an end to its monopoly, ULA turns toward a commercial model.

ESA’s final ATV mission means Russia’s Progress freighter is the only vehicle left to reboost and ultimately de-orbit the ISS.

NASA’s human-spaceflight chief urges the private sector to start preparing to replace the ISS with a commercial space station.

Because the platform is vulnerable to extreme conditions, SpaceX intends to equip the vessel with additional station-keeping capability.

United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) plan to field a new rocket engine with Blue Origin called the BE-4 is only step one of a larger strategic plan to take the company from a sole-source benefactor mentality to competing in a burgeoning commercial market.

Hard-won data from 30 years of space shuttle missions can shape the design of next-generation human spacecraft in areas ranging from vehicle reuse to helping crewmembers survive an accident.

Data from a recent test flight of the IXV, ESA’s experimental spaceplane, is expected to guide development of reusable space vehicles.