Space news

As market forces and security needs push for greater multi-orbit communications satellite constellations, collaborative models and partnerships are becoming increasingly common among operators vying to stay relevant.

The Federal Aviation Administration is requesting a major budget increase for its commercial space office to both keep up with growing launch demand and prepare for potential new regulatory roles.

The German space agency DLR has successfully completed several test firings of its LUMEN upper stage rocket engine demonstrator. The engine will not be...

The first flight of privately developed Japanese rocket ended in a catastrophic failure seconds after liftoff March 12.

The Airbus-built Eutelsat 36D geostationary communications satellite landed in Sanford, Florida, March 11 ahead of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch slated from the nearby Kennedy Space Center at the end of the month.

SpaceX is at least two days away from the potential 3rd test flight of Starship. The company is still targeting the morning...

Crew-7 Splashdown: At 4:47 AM CDT, Crew Dragon Endurance splashed down near Pensacola, Florida, returning NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov safely. This concludes the Crew-7 mission. Payloads: Advanced Resistive Exercise Device-Kinematics (ARED-K): The supporting camera systems and other hardware was set up, and …

Crew 7 returned to Earth after a fiery re-entry through the atmosphere to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico. That fiery...

The focus of the week ahead is dominated, of course, by the much anticipated third test flight of Starship.  

Japan has established a multibillion-dollar Space Strategic Fund to help develop the country’s innovation, autonomy and international competitiveness in space.

Rocket Lab launched a radar imaging satellite for Japanese company Synspective March 12, the latest in a series of launches for that company.

Rocket Lab is currently targeting no earlier than Wednesday, March 13th to launch Synspectives’ Strix-3 satellite to a Sun-synchronous orbit from Pad...

Bremen-based startup POLARIS Spaceplanes has announced that its MIRA demonstrator was damaged during a takeoff incident. The incident occurred during a test flight that was...

Maxar was awarded Phase 4 of the ‘One World Terrain’ contract

Astronomers know of no other region so packed with large stars as this nebula.

A Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down early March 12, returning a multinational crew after more than six months of the International Space Station.

Four international astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico early this morning completing a six month mission to the International Space Station. Crew-7 consists of astronauts from NASA, ESA, […]

Belgian camera maker Simera Sense has raised nearly $15 million to expand system assembly facilities out of South Africa and closer to its component producers in Europe to develop higher-resolution cubesat products.

President Biden’s request for NASA in FY2025 is far short of the increases he has asked for in the past, reflecting the realities of the budget caps in last year’s […]

"Naturally, we have to make hard choices."

SpaceX has secured conditional approval to use extremely high-frequency E-band radio waves to improve the capacity of its low Earth orbit Starlink broadband constellation.

NASA says its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal is constrained by the second year of a debt-ceiling agreement that caps overall spending, leading to delays, potential cancellations and broader uncertainty for many NASA science programs in particular.

Crew-7 Undock: SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance undocked from the ISS at 10:20 AM CDT today to return NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov following a successful 197 day docked mission. The vehicle is scheduled to splash down near Pensacola, Florida, tomorrow at 4:50 AM …

Multi-orbit broadband is about to get an important test run, as terminals that can switch between satellites in LEO and geostationary orbit come online.

Flat panel antenna maker Kymeta is refreshing its leadership team as the company prepares to start shipping its first multi-orbit broadband user terminal.

The two launches took place yesterday evening, just over five hours apart, from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station...

The Pentagon in its 2025 budget proposes $29.4 billion for the U.S. Space Force

The Pentagon is seeking $144 million for OSC, created to attract private investment for tech companies in sectors like space, AI and cybersecurity

COMSO Senior Materiel Leader Col. Richard Kniseley and Deputy Director Jeremy Leader explain how the Space Systems Command seeks to make use of commercial space assets instead of developing systems in-house.

Operators are developing creative solutions for putting AI on satellites, a challenge that comes with myriad technical and logistical obstacles.

Phantom Space Corp. closed a bridge round to fund the Tucson, Arizona-based startup’s development and manufacturing of satellites and launch vehicles.

Falling just short of hypersonic velocity.

Crew Dragon Endurance and the Crew-7 astronauts returned to Earth after the handover to the Crew-8 astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). Spacecraft commander and US Marine Corps Lt. Col Jasmin Moghbeli, pilot and ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen from Denmark, Japanese mission specialist Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA, and Russian mission specialist Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos undocked from the Station on Monday, March 11 at 11:20 AM EDT (15:20 UTC) for their return to Earth. Crew-7:

The company won a five-year contract from the U.S. Space Force to update launch instrumentation at East and West ranges

Hungary has signed a framework agreement with the European Space Agency for cooperation in the development and management of the country's Hungarian to Orbit...

The recent disclosure of intelligence indicating that Russia is perhaps developing a nuclear weapon to target satellites in space sent shock waves through Washington. While details remain scarce, the threat scenarios could be real causes for concern.

Date: March 14th, 2024Time: 1 PM ET Join us on Thursday, March 14, 2024 to unlock your business’s potential with our webinar on Space Innovation. Register below. SpaceNews host Matt […]

The European Space Agency has published the call for the development and operation of its ARRAKIHS mission. ARRAKIHS (Analysis of Resolved Remnants of Accreted...

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of March 10-16, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session […]

Stratolaunch conducted the first powered flight of its Talon vehicle March 9, reaching “high supersonic” speeds in the uncrewed test.

The engine powered the first flight of Stratolaunch's Talon-A1 hypersonic test vehicle

Using NASA’s Juno spacecraft, scientists have calculated the rate of oxygen production on Jupiter’s moon Europa — the first time any spacecraft had directly measured charged oxygen and hydrogen particles from the moon’s atmosphere. From these measurements, the team determined the rate of oxygen production to be much lower than estimated in previous studies.

Congress has passed a final fiscal year 2024 spending bill that provides, in some cases, significantly less funding than requested for civil space programs.

The company won a $3.5 million award under a four-year contract worth up to $23 million for satellite imagery and data analytics to enable space-based tracking of moving vehicles

The Exploration Company has announced that its Mission Possible demonstration flight will not occur in 2024 as previously expected. In an interview with Bloomberg on...

The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has slipped from late April to early May because of International Space Station schedule conflicts and not due to any issues with the spacecraft itself.

Space One had been planning Japan’s first private-sector orbital launch with the debut of its small satellite launcher — this was also to be the maiden flight from a new, dedicated, launch facility.

China is making progress towards a 2030 launch for its Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission and has narrowed down potential landing areas.

Payloads: Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) Kinematics (ARED-K): An Isometric Mid-Thigh Pull (IMTP) session was performed on  ARED in support of the ARED-K investigation. Exploration-class missions including Artemis, Gateway, and beyond require an exercise device that is lightweight and has a small footprint. These devices provide a variety of full body resistance exercise options, and …

Satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital is “looking at everything” regarding the company’s future, CEO Marc Bell told CNBC, as it considers Lockheed Martin’s acquisition offer.