20 Twenties winner Jocelino Rodrigues helped open NASA’s mARC II plasma wind tunnel to SpaceX and Blue Origin, developed a draft ASTM standard and mentors future engineers.
A pioneering mission to study a pair of Martian moons and return a 10-gram soil sample to Earth is being prepared for launch Oct. 19 from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center.
Space executives suggest a lack of regulations may be hindering progress, particularly around manufacturing standards, insurance frameworks and orbital traffic management.
The FAA on Sept. 29 posted its draft environmental assessment of a Blue Origin proposal to boost New Glenn launch rates from Cape Canaveral SFS from 12 to 50 flights per year.
Rocket Lab is challenging NASA’s award of the Mars Telecommunications Network program to Blue Origin, arguing the agency’s source selection was faulty.
NASA has added Relatively Space’s Terran R rocket to its list of potential launch service providers for certain missions, enabling the launch startup to compete for actual contracts.
Blue Origin’s revamp of Launch Complex-36 at Cape Canaveral SFS will turn the site into a dual-pad design that can support the company’s two planned New Glenn heavy-lift vehicle variants.
Blue Origin is looking to parlay U.S. national security and other customers’ interest in in-space mobility, logistics, communications and computing into a variety of in-space services and infrastructure.
Blue Origin says the cause of the New Glenn rocket explosion in May has been traced to the main oxygen valve on one of the booster’s seven main engines.
As part of the upcoming Artemis III flight test, NASA plans to outfit its crewed Orion spacecraft with two mini lasers to connect with SpaceX’s Starlink network.