WASHINGTON — Voyager Space announced that one of its portfolio companies, Nanoracks, will launch a NASA-funded experiment to demonstrate on-orbit metal cutting using a robotic arm. 

In a brief statement to SpaceNews, NASA said it has delayed the launch of the Psyche spacecraft, previously scheduled for Aug. 1, until no earlier than Sept. 20 to address the problem. The delay was first reported by Spaceflight Now.

Space mapping startup LeoLabs announced a multimillion-dollar contract May 24 to provide space domain awareness data, services and training to the Japan Air Self Dense Force. “We are honored to be working with the Japan Ministry of Defense,” Dan Ceperley, LeoLabs CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews. “This is actually the first allied ministry of defense that is using our commercial services in a big way. It sets a good precedent.”

A forest fire is a massive wall of heat and flame.  Driven by high winds, it can leap across roads, spin into columns of fire, turn homes to ash.

At the Space Tech Expo May 24, space industry executives and startup founders shared advice for fledgling startups.

LONG BEACH, Calif. — As governments make slow progress on space traffic management systems, companies may be able work together more quickly to develop processes to support space sustainability.

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Supply chain disruptions continue to pose a challenge for the space industry, but some see those disruptions as an opportunity for new approaches and innovation.

We have a glimpse now of NASA’s latest vision for its first crewed Mars mission. The agency released (opens in new tab) its top objectives for a 30-day, two-person Mars surface mission on Tuesday (May 17) and asked the public to provide feedback on how the planning is going. Submissions were initially due on May 31, but that deadline was recently extended to June 3.

NASA’s InSight lander is completely caked with a thick layer of Martian dust in its latest selfie, which the agency says will likely be the last of the mission.

The last time the planetary science community came together to conduct a decadal survey, Mars was ascendant. NASA had flown a series of Mars missions and was working on its most ambitious rover yet, Curiosity. The decadal survey endorsed continuing that Mars exploration strategy by backing a mission to collect samples as the first step to returning those samples to Earth.

NASA said May 20 it expects to roll out the SLS from the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center to Launch Complex 39B in early June for the next attempt at a wet dress rehearsal (WDR), where the vehicle is filled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants and goes through a countdown that stops just before ignition of the core stage’s four RS-25 engines.

New for 2022, the tau Herculid meteor shower may make an appearance on the night of May 30-31. 

At a briefing about the mission, which has been on the surface of Mars since November 2018, project leaders said science operations will likely end in July as the output of the spacecraft’s two solar panels, coated with dust, drops below critical levels. Increasing dust levels in the atmosphere from seasonal changes are exacerbating the power decline.

Kongsberg ordered the satellites from Lithuania’s NanoAvionics for a 2024 launch. The satellites will have instruments Kongsberg has developed to detect Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, which all passenger ships and most ocean-going vessels above a certain tonnage must carry by law.

NASA released May 17 a set of high-level objectives for its lunar and Mars exploration campaign. The agency also announced it was soliciting input on those objectives through its website until May 31.