Safety advisers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Thursday warned agency policymakers against phasing out the International Space Station at the end of the decade without putting in place a workable successor. Members of the agency’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said in a meeting that they are concerned that commercial space stations may […]
NASA’s Space Launch System Program teams and Northrop Grumman have tested a ground-based version of a booster motor that will be used on the Artemis mission. Flight Support Booster-2 was mounted on a horizontal test stand at Northrop’s test facility in Promontory, Utah, and was activated for two minutes. The motor produced 3.6 million pounds […]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that it has awarded Draper, a non-profit research and development organization, a contract to deliver Artemis science investigations to the moon in 2025. A total of $75 million will be paid to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-headquartered technology innovator for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, delivery from Earth to […]
The Air Force Research Laboratory announced that a change in leadership has taken place within the Space Force unit tasked with tracking and monitoring manmade objects in space. Erstwhile Space Delta 2, Detachment 2 commander, Maj. James Banta relinquished command to Maj. Jin Kim in ceremonies held at Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico, […]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced its intention to support the early-stage study of a concept for a hybrid observatory that would combine a ground-based telescope with a space-based starshade. Starshades block out light coming from distant stars to allow for better observation of planets outside the solar system by telescopes on the ground, […]
Florida-headquartered Terran Orbital announced that the first signal has been acquired with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 satellite. The acquisition of the Terabyte Infrared Delivery Lasercom Optical Link signal means that the spacecraft and the optical ground terminal are now successfully exchanging laser communication signals and are therefore connected, Terran […]
Aerospace company SpaceX has secured a NASA contract to provide launch services for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission. Under the NASA Launch Services II indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, SpaceX will provide a Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the Roman Space Telescope from the Kennedy Space Center. The launch, which is expected to cost around $255 […]
The U.S. Air Force wants to ensure that the U.S. Space Force will have the essential infrastructure to track ground targets from space. Andrew Hunter, an acquisition executive at the Air Force, said during a press meeting that the service needs to guarantee that it has the capability to develop the space-based ground moving target […]
The National Reconnaissance Office is calling on commercial satellite service providers to submit proposals for supplying space-based radio frequency imagery. In a solicitation issued as part of a program called Strategic Commercial Enhancements, the agency said it seeks to evaluate how commercial RF could contribute to its broader signals intelligence needs, SpaceNews reported Thursday. An […]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded contracts to GeoOptics, PlanetIQ and Spire Global to provide space weather data as part of a pilot program to test the value of commercial observations. The deal will see all three companies providing the agency with radio occultation datasets that reveal weather conditions in Earth’s ionosphere, SpaceNews […]
