Space News

Lockheed Martin has developed at its Cape Canaveral, Fla.-based facility a lunar habitat prototype for NASA’s lunar Gateway that is slated for launch by 2024, Denver Business Journal reported Wednesday. The space agency plans to award in the fall of 2019 a contract to build the Gateway platform, which will serve as a command center […] More

Boeing‘s Millennium Space Systems subsidiary has completed an 18-month mission to demonstrate the performance of small satellite subsystems while in orbit. Millennium said Tuesday it decomissioned the ALTAIR Pathfinder satellite through an operations center in El Segundo, Calif., and spent more than 13K hours to address technology risks. The internally funded mission aimed to showcase spacecraft components built to manage […] More

Airbus has awarded Maxar Technologies‘ MDA business a contract to design subsystems for a rover NASA and the European Space Agency plan to use in a joint mission to collect and return samples from Mars to Earth. MDA will aim to develop mobility and sample acquisition systems for potential integration into a “Sample Fetch Rover” that would support […] More

SpaceX has used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch Spaceflight‘s first rideshare mission for multiple government and commercial entities worldwide. The rocket lifted off Monday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to deploy 64 payloads to low-Earth orbit as part of the SSO-A: A SmallSat Express mission, SpaceX said Monday. Cargo includes 49 cubesats and 15 […] More

The Lockheed Martin-built Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer arrived Monday at the asteroid Bennu after a 1.2B-mile journey. NASA said Tuesday its navigation team will use preliminary survey data to prepare for OSIRIS-REx’s entrance to the potentially hazardous asteroid’s orbit on Dec. 31 to collect two ounces of regolith samples. The vehicle began maneuvers around Bennu […] More

Lockheed Martin has started to upgrade the U.S. Air Force’s legacy ground control platforms as the service prepares to launch in December the first GPS III satellite aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, National Defense reported Friday. Those updates to the existing ground system include contingency operation changes and the M-code signal, which is set for […] More

A NASA space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for solar exploration has received an innovation of the year recognition from Popular Science magazine. The Parker Solar Probe flew on August 12 and came to within 15 million miles of the sun’s surface while traveling at a speed of 153.4K mph, Johns […] More

Telesat has received a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to assess the capability of commercial satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit to support the Pentagon’s future broadband connectivity requirements and other space-based communication needs. The company said Tuesday it will collaborate with Leidos on the contract awarded through DARPA’s Blackjack program. Blackjack seeks to leverage […] More

Some launch service providers have moved to decrease the number of their rocket offerings as part of cost-saving efforts, SpaceNews reported Wednesday. Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, told audience at the SpaceCom Expo held Wednesday in Houston the company has reduced Atlas 5 and Delta 2 and 4 configurations from 41 to […] More

Aerojet Rocketdyne has built the propulsion devices that powered a NASA spacecraft during a journey to Mars as part of a mission to study the planet’s seismology, rotation and internal temperature. InSight, which landed Monday on the Martian surface, used MR-107N 50 engines, an RL10C-1 main engine, MR-106 reaction control thrusters and MR-111C thrusters in its nearly six-month trip […] More

Harris has built and delivered a 3,500-pound mirror the National Science Foundation will integrate with a ground-based observatory designed to identify new solar systems and potentially hazardous asteroids. The company said Monday it shipped the secondary mirror for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and will also provide associated ground support equipment and cell assembly components for LSST. An NSF-led […] More