ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA is starting to implement recommendations of the astrophysics decadal survey by announcing plans for a new line of missions and laying the groundwork for future large space telescopes.

TAMPA, Fla. — Space Norway said Jan. 13 it expects to start repairing next month one of two undersea fiber-optic cables it operates between its Svalbard satellite station and mainland Norway, after a failure left the Arctic region without a backup connection.

WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch flew its giant aircraft Jan. 16 for just the third time as company executives promise a higher rate of flight activities this year, including the first flight of a hypersonic test vehicle.

Cosmic Girl, the Boeing 747 aircraft that serves as the launch platform for LauncherOne, took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 4:39 p.m. Eastern. It released the rocket at approximately 5:52 p.m. Eastern, which then ascended to low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 500 kilometers. Virgin Orbit tweeted an hour after release that all seven satellites on the rocket had been deployed.

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:25 a.m. Eastern Time January 13, 2022. The upper stage reached orbit eight and a half minutes later and, after a second burn 55 minutes after liftoff, deployed its payloads into a 525-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit over the following half-hour.

A powerful underwater volcano eruption in Tonga on Saturday (Jan. 15) was captured as it happened in stunning images from an Earth-watching satellite, showing the sheer power for the explosive event in the South Pacific. 

China’s Tianwen 1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year’s surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet.

When the most massive stars die, they collapse to form some of the densest objects known in the Universe: black holes. They are the “darkest” objects in the cosmos, as not even light can escape their incredibly strong gravity.

A dense, magnetic star violently erupted and spat out as much energy as a billion suns — and it happened in a fraction of a second, scientists recently reported.

This type of star, known as a magnetar, is a neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field, and magnetars often flare spectacularly and without warning. But even though magnetars can be thousands of times brighter than our sun, their eruptions are so brief and unpredictable that they’re challenging for astrophysicists to find and study.

The center announced last week that it was starting the process of an environmental review of the proposed Launch Complex (LC) 49 in response to an inquiry from SpaceX. The center did not disclose a timeline for conducting the review but said it would precede any agreement with SpaceX to develop the site.

The Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) said Dec. 17 it is joining a $45 million investment round for Montreal-based NorthStar, which is developing a constellation of commercial imaging satellites to monitor what’s happening in orbit and down below.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration formally supports extending operations of the International Space Station through the end of the decade, an announcement that is neither surprising nor addresses how to get all the station’s partners, notably Russia, to agree on the station’s future.

TAMPA, Fla. — Advanced Cooling Technologies (ACT) has won NASA funding for thermal control solutions that enable vehicles and other equipment to survive harsh lunar environments without an active power source.

SEOUL, South Korea — Japan’s recently elected prime minister set an end-of-the-decade goal for sending Japanese astronauts to the moon as part of the U.S.-led Artemis program. 

HELSINKI — This year, China’s main space contractor will target more than 40 orbital launches, including completion of the Tiangong space station, following 48 successful launches in 2021.

WASHINGTON — After a year marked by little launch activity and one high-profile failure, the head of India’s space program says he expects much more in 2022, including an uncrewed test flight for its human spaceflight program.