The Defense Innovation Unit has awarded Maxar Technologies a contract to design two robotic arms for in-space assembly and servicing applications. Under the terms of the $9.3 million deal, Maxar will deliver flight-ready units that are each 2 meters in length. Work will be done over three years, Maxar said Monday. Maxar said that the […]
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory announced that a satellite solar panel designed by Northrop Grumman to harvest energy in space to be beamed back to Earth performed successfully in lab tests. The testing was done as part of a $100 million experiment being funded by the AFRL to collect solar power from space for […]
L3Harris Technologies has delivered the fourth and final imager for NASA’s constellation of geostationary weather satellites, dubbed GOES-R. The space agency jointly operates the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R constellation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These satellites allow for improved hurricane track and intensity forecasts, increased thunderstorm and tornado warning lead time and earlier […]
NASA and the European Space Agency have rescheduled the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope to Dec. 24. Liftoff was originally slated for Dec. 22. According to the Space Telescope Science Insititute and other sources, takeoff was moved to the new date due to a communications problem between the Arianespace Ariane 5 spacecraft and […]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that it has awarded Albama-based RSi-QuantiTech JV the Marshall Engineering Technicians and Trades Support III contract for a wide range of engineering and management services. Specifically, the deal would require the joint venture to provide trade skills and help manage the technical staff at the Marshall Space Flight […]
Col. Robert Long, commander of the Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 30, believes that the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California has the potential to be a national spaceport, citing the convenience of launching space missions from the site. Long explained at a Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies forum that the base allows rockets to […]
Austin-headquartered CesiumAstro announced that it has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to develop high-performance communication links for lunar and deep space missions. The deal calls for the development of radio frequency active phased array antennas to enable dual function communications and sensing for […]
NASA is gearing up for four Earth science missions in 2022 aimed at providing observational data on weather conditions, mineral dust, oceans and surface water. The first mission on NASA’s 2022 agenda is dubbed Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats. TROPICS will feature six CubeSats scheduled for launch […]
Spire Global is testing a lithium-ion battery platform from energy solutions provider EnerSys for space operations as part of a U.S. Space Force Small Business Innovation Research program. Spire Global integrated EnerSys ZeroVolt 18650 battery cells onto its 3U Low Earth Multi-Use Receiver CubeSat, which was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on June […]
NASA is partnering with Axiom Space for its second private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The Axiom Mission 2 is scheduled for launch between fall 2022 and late spring 2023 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will go on for no more than 14 days. The in-orbit activities are yet to […]
