Space

Astrobotic has unveiled a 47K-square-foot headquarters in Pittsburgh that will serve as a hub for development and operation of the company's robotic platforms designed to support lunar missions.

Local CEO Matthew Desch took over Iridium, based in McLean, Va., 12 years ago and helped the company recover from a troubled past to become the powerhouse that it is today. Under Desch’s leadership, Iridium averaged nine percent growth during the past decade and is operating in a category all …

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft left the International Space Station on Friday after delivering 7.4K pounds of scientific equipment and crew supplies as part of the NG-10 cargo resupply mission.

Northrop Grumman has finished acoustic and sine vibration tests on the spacecraft element of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope at a company facility in Redondo Beach, Calif.

Maxar Technologies’ SSL subsidiary has received a contract from Environmental Defense Fund to design and define requirements for a small satellite designed to detect and monitor methane emissions from oil and gas facilities worldwide. MethaneSAT is a small form-factor satellite that will work to provide high-resolution images to help detect and measure low- and high-emission sources in regions that constitute more than 80 percent of global production of oil and gas per week, Maxar said Thursday. 

Iridium Communications CEO Matt Desch has said the company could opt to send the six ground spare satellites for the Iridium NEXT constellation should an opportunity for a rideshare mission arise, SpaceNews reported Thursday. “If the right deal comes along, similar to the one that we had with Iridium-6 and the …

NASA‘s New Horizons exploration spacecraft, built by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, has captured the image of the most distant space object explored in human history yet. The spacecraft, from a distance of 10.6K miles, photographed “Ultima Thule,” an object located within the Kuiper Belt, JHU APL said Wednesday. The …

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has confirmed a spacecraft it built for NASA has reached its target object in the Kuiper Belt, performing the farthest space exploration in history. The New Horizons probe encountered Ultima Thule before New Year and already sent flyby data to an operations center on Earth, APL said Tuesday. APL …

United Launch Alliance plans to launch no earlier than Sunday, Jan. 6, a National Reconnaissance Office payload aboard its Delta IV Heavy rocket, Spaceflight Now reported Friday. The report said engineers have begun to address a small hydrogen leak in the engine section discovered during the Dec. 19 launch attempt. The NROL-71 …

Some industry executives have said that NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program has provided companies an opportunity to advance their technology platforms and form partnerships with additional firms, SpaceNews reported Thursday. “Going back to the moon with commercial technology opens the floodgates,” said Grant Anderson, president, CEO and co-founder of …

Deloitte and Dcode have announced the conclusion of a seven-week program to help six space industry startups market their technology platforms to U.S. government agencies. More than 100 government and industry leaders took part in the Space 2.0 Accelerator program in Washington, D.C., to help connect the U.S. Air Force, …

SSL demonstrated its solar electric propulsion system on two communications satellites that were launched into geostationary orbit this year. The Maxar Technologies subsidiary said Wednesday SPT-140 is an updated version of the SPT-100 electric thruster that has supported 34 missions and logged more than 100K firing hours. SPT-140 is designed to use the Power Processing Unit 140 and …

NASA has announced that a reusable, multi-mission orbital vehicle by Sierra Nevada Corp. is now ready for full-scale manufacturing and testing after passing an integration review validating its design performance. The company said Tuesday it has already started integrating critical parts of the Dream Chaser spacecraft, including major structural components, …

Blue Origin‘s New Shepard rocket is scheduled to launch Tuesday and carry nine NASA-backed research and technology payloads into space as part of the agency’s Flight Opportunities program. The NS-10 mission will mark the space vehicle’s 10th launch and the second time the company will fly a Johns Hopkins Applied Physics …

Rocket Lab launched 10 cubesats into space on Sunday morning as part of its Venture Class Launch Services agreement with NASA. The company said Sunday its Electron rocket lifted off with the small research satellites at 1:33 a.m. Eastern time in Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand. Three NASA centers, one middle school and seven universities built …