Blue Origin

A decade ago, SpaceX launched six Falcon 9 rockets in a year—now, it could be on track for an orbital launch rate of 136 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights.

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

NASA plans to add uncrewed missions to both SpaceX and Blue Origin’s Human Landing System service contracts to deliver a lunar rover and a habitat to the Moon.

Terms of the contracts were not disclosed, nor how many launches each company was awarded.

Last June, the service awarded the initial NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 contracts worth $5.6 billion to United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and SpaceX.

SpaceX is receiving $733.6 million for the two launches.

The mission would deliver back to Earth scientifically selected samples of the Martian surface being gathered by the agency’s Mars Perseverance rover.

Nelson talks with Aviation Week about the role private companies will play and his concerns about China’s ambitions on the Moon.

A new launch date was not immediately announced.

In some emerging use cases in geostationary Earth orbit, conventional satellites weighing several metric tons would be too expensive.

The static test fire at Cape Canaveral SFS marked Blue Origin’s first fueling of a New Glenn rocket stage with flight propellants, and the first engine burn of an integrated flight stage.

With testing and integration still ahead, the New Glenn will miss its Mars launch debut.

The Jacklyn is a 380-ft.-long, 200-ft.-wide specialized barge.

New technologies are leveraging the advantages of GEO.

The company has resolved a problem that impaired operation of one of the three parachutes on the last flight of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft.

The Pentagon is exploring using commercial launch vehicles for point-to-point delivery by the 2030s.

A decade after Congress began banning Russian rocket engines for U.S. missions, the final national security payload for an Atlas V has lifted off.

The U.S. Space Force does not yet anticipate any delays to its upcoming launch manifest because of the investigation into the July 11 failure of a Falcon 9.

The two-decade experiment known as Spirit AeroSystems is set for a dramatic and rocky close.

A group of recently launched startups are bucking the strategy.

The U.S. Space Force has awarded contracts to Blue Origin and Stoke Space under the Orbital Services Program (OSP)-4 effort.

The newcomer joins incumbents ULA and SpaceX on the Space Force’s launch vendor list.

The Space Force has awarded contracts to Blue Origin, CACI International, General Atomics and Viasat to develop space laser-communication terminal prototypes.

The U.S. Space Force has selected Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance (ULA), and SpaceX as the three service providers for Phase 3 of the NSSL program.

Out of 48 proposals for less-expensive, faster options for returning samples from Mars, NASA selected seven ideas from companies for 90-day study contracts.