Gilmore Space secures license for first orbital launch
WASHINGTON — Australian launch vehicle startup Gilmour Space has received a license for its first orbital launch, which could take place before the end of the year.
WASHINGTON — Australian launch vehicle startup Gilmour Space has received a license for its first orbital launch, which could take place before the end of the year.
MILAN — NASA is rethinking its desire for a “continuous human presence” in low Earth orbit during the transition from the International Space Station to commercial platforms to include options where, at least temporarily, the agency may not always have astronauts in orbit.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Even a successful crewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner vehicle could create a temporary hiccup in plans to exchange seats between commercial crew vehicles and Soyuz spacecraft going to the International Space Station.
MILAN — NASA will use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for its two crew rotation missions to the International Space Station in 2025 as it continues to evaluate if it will require Boeing to perform another test flight of its Starliner spacecraft.
MILAN — Japanese startup ArkEdge Space won a contract from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA to study the feasibility of establishing a constellation of position, navigation and timing satellites in low-Earth orbit.
MILAN — A group of existing and proposed spaceports are joining forces to share lessons learned and potentially develop standards for launch facilities around the world.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Commerce announced long-awaited changes to export control rules for space technologies, a move aimed at bolstering American competitiveness in the global space industry. The new regulations will make it easier for U.S. companies to sell satellites, launch vehicles, and other space-related technologies to close allies, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Richard Branson, the Virgin Galactic founder made record-breaking hot-air balloon flights across the Atlantic and the Pacific in 1987 and 1991, respectively — and he’ll soon take to the winds again, serving as co-pilot on the first crewed flight by Space Perspective, a Florida-based stratospheric ballooning company. That landmark mission is expected sometime in 2025.
Mars is a planet of vast contrasts — huge volcanoes, deep canyons, and craters that may or may not host running water. It will be an amazing location for future tourists to explore, once we put the first Red Planet colonies into motion. The landing sites for these future missions will likely need to be flat plains for safety and practical reasons, but perhaps they could land within a few days’ drive of some more interesting geology. Here are some locations that future Martians could visit.
NASA recently put a crucial part of the Roman Space Telescope — the Outer Barrel Assembly — through a rigorous “spin test” designed to evaluate its resilience against the intense gravitational forces it will encounter during launch. This test, a standard procedure in aerospace engineering, typically takes place inside a massive centrifuge that mimics the elevated gravity conditions of a space mission.
SpaceX sent yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit tonight (Oct. 18).
On April 19, NASA issued a press release announcing that Slovenia had signed the Artemis Accords. Following quickly on the heels of accession by Switzerland (April 15) and Sweden (April 16), this brings the total number of signatories to the United States-led political commitment in space to a whopping 39 nations. Largely ignored by all but the media outlets devoted to space activities, these modest signing ceremonies play a tremendously significant role in the new 21st century space race.
The widely anticipated proposal could include regulations or directives, or it could be “just a set of policy principles that would apply to space activities in the EU internal market,” Maria Elena De Maestri, University of Genova international law professor, said Oct. 18 at the International Astronautical Congress here.
MILAN — Refurbishment of ground systems like a mobile launch platform could become another factor in the schedule for the Artemis 2 mission that NASA says is still planned for launch next September.