Space news

A weekly European spaceflight update with exclusive infographics, in-depth analysis, and a review of the week's biggest announcements.

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NASA’s Orion spacecraft made its closest approach to the moon on Monday morning during day five of the Artemis 1 mission.

NASA says a historical review of actions by former administrator James Webb confirmed its decision to keep the agency’s flagship space telescope named after him.

A 12,000-pound European broadband communications satellite designed to beam internet signals to airplanes and ships is ready to rocket into a high-altitude orbit from Cape Canaveral Monday night, marking the 11th and final flight for SpaceX’s oldest active Falcon 9 booster. The rocket will devote all of its lift capability to deploying the Eutelsat 10B satellite into as high of an orbit as possible.

The successful launch of the Artemis 1 mission comes just in time for the European Space Agency as it seeks support from its member states for new exploration initiatives.

The U.S. Space Systems Command signed an agreement with Blue Origin that “paves the way” for the company’s New Glenn rocket to compete for national security launch contracts

A SpaceX recovery ship is headed more than a thousand kilometers downrange to support the second expendable Falcon 9 rocket launch in...

Nearly five days after its sky-lighting launch, NASA’s unpiloted Orion crew capsule closed in on the moon Sunday, on course for a critical rocket firing and lunar flyby Monday to whip the craft into a distant orbit. The goal is to pave the way toward a piloted flight around the moon in 2024.

A SpaceX Dragon launching soon to the International Space Station is the last cargo version of the spacecraft the company expects to build, with one more crewed spacecraft under construction.

NASA has approved plans to proceed with the next critical milestone in the Artemis 1 mission, a maneuver by the uncrewed Orion spacecraft as it flies by the moon Nov. 21.

The inaugural flight of the Space Launch System won positive reactions from the White House and Congress, celebrating the successful liftoff while overlooking the vehicle’s extensive delays.

NASA has awarded a six-month extension to ADNET Systems Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland, for the Space and Earth Science Data Analysis (SESDA IV) contract.

A year and a half after netting around $417 million through its IPO, AST SpaceMobile is seeking more funds to accelerate a direct-to-smartphone constellation that has fallen behind a key regulatory deadline.

NASA has selected Air Products and Chemicals, Inc of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to supply 33 million liters of liquid helium to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Payloads: Nanoracks Module-9: Several photos were taken of the Nanoracks Module-9 hardware while in the Cupola area. NanoRacks Module-9 consists of multiple student experiments in individual Mixture Tubes all housed within a NanoRacks Module container.  Some experiments require crew interaction to remove clamps in order to mix materials to activate and/or deactivate the experiments. The …

The European Union reached a provisional agreement Nov. 17 to cover nearly half the 6 billion euro ($6.2 billion) cost of deploying a secure connectivity constellation by 2027.

Artemis I is on its way to the Moon, Planetary Academy is here to inspire your kids, and LightSail 2 has come down.

Students from Maryland and Oklahoma will have the opportunity next week to hear from astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Japan’s ispace expects SpaceX to launch its lunar lander Nov. 28 at the earliest for a mission to the moon’s surface roughly five months later.

The Japanese government has formally agreed to extend its participation on the International Space Station through 2030 and provide components for the lunar Gateway.

"The relevant incident will not affect the Chinese space station..."

A NASA demonstration of an inflatable heat shield showed the technology worked and can be scaled up for missions on Earth and Mars, project leaders said Nov. 17.

Scotland-based launch startup Skyrora are focused on making a first orbital launch attempt late next year, building on experience from a suborbital attempt in Iceland.

United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno is advising the U.S. Space Force to preemptively buy heavy launch services as rockets could be in short supply over the next several years.

The three-and-a-half-year solar sailing mission showed LightSail 2 could change its orbit with sunlight alone.

In low Earth orbit (LEO) this week, NASA, Roscosmos, and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) performed spacewalks outside humankind’s two permanently-crewed space stations.

Conspiracy theorists are unhappy with Elon Musk and Starlink. Complaints such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates teaming up to torture them...

Boeing is reorganizing its defense and space business, a sector of the company that last month reported nearly $3 billion in losses in the third quarter.

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a remote galaxy shining just 350 million years after the birth of the cosmos 13.8 billion years ago, surprising astronomers who are struggling to figure out how stars and galaxies could have formed so rapidly in the wake of the Big Bang, researchers said Thursday.

Former employees of SpaceX have filed federal complaints against the company, alleging Elon Musk’s venture illegally fired them in response to the concerns they expressed, including about sexual misconduct allegations directed at the CEO.

Exploring a sediment-rich location in this Mars delta offers tantalizing opportunities for the six-wheeler’s science team.

Precious Payload has announced partnerships with a pair of companies to market payload slots and launches on its online satellite launch marketplace.

The race between SpaceX and NASA to get their monster rockets into space tipped in the government’s favor this week, with the Space Launch System (SLS) finally thundering off the launch pad – putting more pressure on Elon Musk’s company to get Starship off the ground. 

RS Extravehicular Activity (EVA) #55: During today’s EVA, FE-4 Sergey Prokopyev (EV1) and FE-5 Dmitry Petelin (EV2) performed a multitude of tasks including preparation of a radiator and an airlock for installation on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM). The MRM2 hatch opened at 8:41 AM CT. The following tasks were completed: Installation of STRELA adapter …

Microsoft announced the private preview Nov. 17 of a new product, the Azure Orbital Software Development Kit, the latest move by the software giant to play an important role role in the rapidly evolving space sector.

An English airport has secured the first-of-its-kind spaceport license from a British regulator that brings it one step closer to hosting the country’s first orbital launch.

Around 10 am Pacific on November 17th, SpaceX test-fired one of its Falcon 9 rockets and announced that its next Starlink launch...

NASA and the Government of Japan on Thursday announced further contributions by Japan to Gateway, a key component of the agency’s Artemis missions for long-term lunar exploration.

NASA will host a news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Nov. 18, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to preview Orion’s entry into the Moon’s sphere of influence and the pair of maneuvers that will propel the spacecraft into a distant retrograde lunar orbit.

The Artemis I mission, the first flight of the Orion spacecraft and SLS, is now underway after a successful launch from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center at 1:47:44 AM EST (06:47:44 UTC) on Nov. 16.

Spire Global has unveiled a new-generation satellite bus to meet demand for larger and more capable satellites.

Apple is extending its SOS via satellite service for iPhone 14 smartphones to parts of Europe in December, the company said Nov. 15 after bringing the capability online across the United States and Canada.

NRO Director Chris Scolese said the agency wants to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to orchestrate the operation of imaging satellites and to analyze data in orbit

Canadian launch startup SpaceRyde revealed plans Nov. 15 to launch four private commercial flights for ISILaunch, a subsidiary of Innovative Solutions In Space B.V. of the Netherlands.

Rocket Factory Augsburg has signed a deal allowing it to build and operate its own engine test stand at German Aerospace Center (DLR) premises.

Payloads: Snowcone Cloud Edge Compute Demonstration (Snowcone): To meet yearly certification requirements and prepare for later science operations, the Snowcone science hardware was powered on, appropriate files were loaded, and the system checked out.  Snowcone demonstrates technology to screen astronaut images and identify those that may contain sensitive information not for public release.  The technology …

Arianespace and German launch startups Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg are moving towards first launches next year but have mixed views on how the European launch sector has and should develop.

Following a successful launch of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket in the world, the agency’s Orion spacecraft is on its way to the Moon as part of the Artemis program.

The US space agency had not launched an orbital rocket since 2011.