Space news

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, Bhavya Lal, associate administrator for Technology, Policy, and Strategy, as well as other agency speakers, will participate in the 2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech Forum from Monday, Jan. 23, to Friday, Jan. 27, in National Harbor, Maryland.

Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, in a memo outlining his priorities said the service should pursue stronger partnerships with allies.

A Falcon 9 rocket has successfully launched SpaceX’s Starlink 2-4 mission after seven delays pushed it from November 2022 to January 2023....

Slingshot Aerospace is developing a system for the U.S. Space Force that will use data from HawkEye 360’s satellites to identify potential threats to GPS signals

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s next generation of geostationary weather satellites will significantly improve weather forecasting thanks to the addition of a hyperspectral infrared sounder.

Eutelsat said Jan. 19 it retired a satellite last week that had helped Europe transition from analog to digital television two decades ago.

After ending on a bit of a downer (“A year to forget for space stocks”), I’m entering 2023 with what feels like contrarian optimism. The space industry is chock full of opportunities and milestones to look forward to over the next twelve months, as the market for 21st century space companies continues to evolve and mature.

SpaceX is answering the Pentagon’s call for more commercial allies with Starshield, a business that will leverage its manufacturing might to provide custom- built spacecraft, sensors, and secure communications services.

One reason is that investors may have been wary after the space SPAC crash.

Last year was rough for space startups. Overall investment dropped 58 percent from its $47.4 billion peak in 2021 to $20.1 billion in 2022.

Payloads: Food Physiology: A diet briefing was conducted between the crew and the Principal Investigator team in support of the Food Physiology investigation. The Integrated Impact of Diet on Human Immune Response, the Gut Microbiota, and Nutritional Status During Adaptation to Spaceflight (Food Physiology) experiment is designed to characterize the key effects of an enhanced …

SpaceX’s first launch of the year from California, and fourth mission overall in 2023, added 51 more satellites to the Starlink internet constellation, keeping pace with the company’s goal of 100 Falcon rocket launches this year.

The co-chair of the most recent Earth science decadal survey warned that NASA faces “difficult choices” between continuing current missions and starting new missions given limited funding.

Swiss startup ClearSpace said Jan. 19 it has raised about $29 million to support its first space debris removal mission in 2026.

It is largely business as usual on the International Space Station as NASA adapts its current activities and future plans to Russia’s decision to replace a damaged Soyuz spacecraft docked there.

SpaceX appears to be preparing to ship a huge collection of hardware – including parts of a possible launch deluge system –...

Terran Orbital’s decision not to build a large satellite factory in Florida is only a minor setback for the state’s efforts to grow the space industry’s presence in the state and to expand beyond launch, according to one official.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket just after sunrise Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, hauling a GPS navigation satellite into orbit to replace an aging 16-year-old spacecraft in the global positioning network trusted to guide everything from military weapons to urban commuters.

Mobile satellite connectivity specialist Anuvu said Jan. 17 it has signed a deal to resell Starlink services as plans to use a rival constellation proposed by Telesat remain uncertain.

Payloads: Device for the study of Critical Liquids and Crystallization (DECLIC): The crew removed the Directional Solidification Insert (DSI) from the DECLIC facility and installed the Analyse des Liquides Critiques dans l’Espace (ALICE)-Like Insert (ALI). ALI studies sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) near its critical point. The DECLIC facility experienced thermal control issues late last year which …

A pair of news conferences on Wednesday, Jan. 25, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will highlight the agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station in February. The mission is NASA’s sixth crew rotation flight involving a U.S. commercial spacecraft carrying crew for a science expedition aboard the microgravity laborator

SpaceX has followed up Falcon Heavy’s latest spectacle with a Falcon 9 launch shortly after sunrise, producing more ethereal views of the...

Frank Calvelli said his push for speed and agility in procurement programs is starting to resonate

The Starship test program has hit the ground running in 2023, with the full-stack partnership of Booster 7 and Ship 24 entering a pre-launch test flow at Starbase.

NASA announced Wednesday it has issued an award to The Boeing Company for the agency’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which seeks to inform a potential new generation of green single-aisle airliners.

NASA has had a series of "almost" a year missions.

NASA’s inspector general says that the agency needs to do a better job coordinating international partnerships in its Artemis lunar exploration campaign and overcoming obstacles like export control.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 18 lifted off at 7:24 a.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying a U.S. Space Force GPS satellite.

China will launch its Queqiao-2 communications relay satellite in 2024 to support upcoming robotic landing missions at the lunar south pole and far side of the moon.

A budget shortfall has caused NASA to scale back plans for a project that would support sending scientists to the International Space Station to conduct research.

ABL Space Systems says a power failure, possibly linked to a fire in the first stage of its RS1 rocket, caused the inaugural launch of the vehicle to fail last week.

SpaceX may be focused on preparing Starship S24 and Super Heavy Booster 7 for their potentially imminent orbital launch debut, but the...

SpaceX’s second launch for the U.S. military in three days is set to blast off from Florida and deliver a GPS navigation satellite into orbit Wednesday, reinforcing the global positioning and timing network as four more GPS spacecraft are in storage at a Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado to be launched as needed over the next few years.

Rocket Lab sees the U.S. military as a potential customer of the company’s future medium-lift rocket, Neutron

SpaceX launched its fourth mission of the year, a GPS-III satellite for the US Space Force, on Wednesday, Jan. 18. The launch saw a Falcon 9 rocket lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:24 EST (12:24 UTC).

Spanish startup Fossa Systems, which operates a constellation for connecting low-power monitoring devices, hopes to move pilot projects to full-blown commercial services this year by adding more capable satellites to its fleet.

Raytheon won a $8.7 million contract to develop mission planning software for the U.S. Air Force rocket cargo program.

The U.S. Space Force announced Jan. 17 it has delivered the first of two space sensor payloads scheduled to fly on Japan’s navigation satellites.

Payloads: Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR): Preparations were made to support a Fuel Oxidizer Management Assembly (FOMA) calibration. The FOMA calibration is performed periodically and helps to verify accurate readings from the various measurement systems in the CIR. The CIR facility includes an optics bench, combustion chamber, fuel, and oxidizer control, and five different cameras for …

CesiumAstro, an Austin-based startup specializing in phased array technology, has acquired TXMission, a U.K. company that develops software-defined radios and modems.

China’s state-owned and commercial space sector actors are planning a total of more than 70 launches across 2023 as the country's space activities continue to expand.

Swedish and European officials inaugurated what they called mainland Europe’s first orbital launch site Jan. 13, but it’s unclear who will launch from the facility and when.

Two SpaceX ships have headed to sea to recover parts of Falcon 9 after the rocket’s fifth upgraded GPS III satellite launch...

CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s South Texas Starship aims to build up to five of the two-stage megarockets in 2023. SpaceX’s...

On January 15th, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off for the second time in 75 days to launch another batch of US...

At the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) on Jan. 11, three teams presented research that utilized the capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The first team used Webb to observe the dusty disk surrounding a young red dwarf star, the second to discover an exoplanet, and the third used the telescope’s infrared sensitivity to uncover the mysterious star formation processes in an open star cluster.

A new study by Quilty Analytics Quilty Analytics says the industry is 'witnessing a transformation in the domain of very high resolution imagery'

NASA is preparing to move into the next stage of planning for a future large space telescope that may take two decades to launch, building on lessons learned from past missions.

You really shouldn't miss the images of the booster return.

Payloads: Human Research Facility (HRF) Veggie: Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaires were completed by the crew. The Pick-and-Eat Salad-Crop Productivity, Nutritional Value, and Acceptability to Supplement the ISS Food System (Veggie) investigation is a phased research project that includes Veg-04A, Veg-04B, Veg-05, and HRF Veg including HRF Veggie POMS questionnaires. This work addresses the …