NASA has awarded Kongsberg Satellite Services USA and SpaceLink with contracts valued at $162,000 and $190,000, respectively, to study direct-to-Earth and lunar space relay communications and navigation capabilities existing in the market for the Artemis moon missions. The companies will determine commercial offerings that would improve the transmission of critical data between spacecraft and ground […]
The first mineral maps have arrived from NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation mission. They plot the surface composition of certain parts of northwest Nevada and southern Libya as part of a broader drive to study climate change. According to NASA, fine mineral particles in those areas are naturally lifted into the atmosphere, potentially […]
NASA has awarded Planet Federal a contract extension to provide critical data to over 300,000 scientists within the space agency. Under the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program, Planet Federal will continue providing satellite-based data to support research efforts in the areas of climate change, ecosystems, disaster response and other critical missions. Information gathered by Planet’s […]
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has awarded SpaceLink a contract to investigate how to integrate commercial optical ground terminals into the Near Space Network. The study involves the determination of existing obstacles and solutions as well as a demonstration of multisource data transmission from the Mojave Gateway facility to NASA terrestrial centers using cloud infrastructure […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency has awarded Inmarsat Government a potential 10-year $980 million contract to provide worldwide commercial telecommunications services to the U.S. Navy. Under the U.S. Navy Commercial Broadband Satellite Program Satellite Services Contract II, Inmarsat Government will provide end-to-end satellite communications services that can support 500 simultaneous full period, full duplex, simplex […]
NASA has confirmed that the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos changed its orbit after it was hit by the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft on Sept. 26. The moonlet previously took 11 hours and 55 minutes to revolve around its larger parent asteroid Didymos. Following DART’s impact, Dimorphos had its orbit time changed to 11 hours and […]
York Space Systems has won a firm-fixed-price other transaction prototype agreement with a $200 million ceiling from the Space Development Agency to provide 12 low Earth orbit satellites and related support toward establishing the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System Program. The spacecraft, scheduled to launch in fiscal year 2025, will be used to test […]
NASA has selected 61 teams that will compete in the 2023 Human Exploration Rover Challenge, which will take place at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The teams will attempt to design, build and test human-powered rovers, which they will have to use in a half-mile obstacle course that simulates lunar and […]
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule lifted off on board a Falcon 9 rocket on Oct. 5 from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station. The mission, called Crew-5, was the sixth astronaut flight performed under SpaceX’s partnership with NASA. Aboard the Dragon Endeavor spacecraft were American astronauts […]
Ball Aerospace has won a $176 million Space Development Agency contract to construct and operate 10 satellites as part of the National Defense Space Architecture Experimental Testbed program. Scheduled to launch in 2024 and 2025, the satellites are planned to demonstrate low-latency data transport and beyond-line-of-sight command and control, as well as carry government payloads […]
