Tag Archives: NASA

Blue Origin, a space company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, used a capsule with updated crew systems during the company's 14th mission with the New Shepard rocket. The updated capsule featured new push-to-talk communications systems, noise reduction tools, cushioned wall linings, environmental systems and a crew alert system, Blue Origin said Thursday.

Lockheed Martin has sent the Orion capsule to NASA’s exploration ground systems team for final preparations ahead of the unmanned Artemis I mission to lunar orbit that will launch later this year. The spacecraft concluded assembly operations and testing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Planet has secured a deal with NASA to continue the provision of satellite imagery technologies to the agency until September as part of the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program.

Boeing will provide six more solar arrays for the International Space Station under a sustainment contract modification with NASA. The company said Monday it will deliver the arrays to boost ISS's power supply with over 120 kilowatts of solar electricity that will be used to power its systems and equipment and support public and private experiments and research in the station.

Robert Smith, former vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin's radar and sensor systems unit, has joined BWX Technologies as president of government operations. BWXT said Monday Smith will oversee the company's nuclear business lines in the U.S. covering work for government customers such as the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration and NASA.

An industry team led by Leidos’ Dynetics business has submitted its proposal for a human landing system that will support NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon slated for 2024.

Virgin's orbit business has moved the date of its LauncherOne rocket's second orbital launch to Jan. 10 due to pandemic-related limitations, Space News reported Tuesday. The company originally planned to conduct the liftoff in mid-December 2020 but experienced personnel shortage because of precautionary measures for COVID-19 contact tracing.

NASA is scheduled to conduct a hot fire test for four engines built by Aerojet Rocketdyne for the Space Launch System Jan. 17 as part of a series of “Green Run” trials for the vehicle's core stage.

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to depart the International Space Station and host a two-week demonstration of the SharkSat payload once it leaves the ISS. SharkSat is intended to test and demonstrate multiprocessor systems, digital receivers, integrated circuits and other electronic components to facilitate the development of a Ka-band software defined radio that could have potential applications in 5G, space-to-ground and space-to-space communications.

NASA has unveiled recent updates to its Lockheed Martin-designed X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology jet and said that construction of the Mach 1.4-speed aircraft is halfway complete, Aviation International News reported Monday.

An updated SpaceX-built spacecraft is slated to leave the International Space Station Jan. 11 following the delivery of over 6.4K pounds of research equipment, hardware and crew supplies to the orbital outpost.

NASA expects Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft to leave the International Space Station Jan. 6 following the delivery of almost 8K pounds of crew supplies, commercial technology and scientific experiments.

The Demonstration and Science Experiments satellite of the Air Force Research Laboratory performed the first space-to-space very low frequency transmission within three months of its launch during a coordinated experiment with the Japanese Space Agency’s Arase spacecraft. The DSX satellite launched in June 2019 to study the interactions of space plasma, radiation belts and radio waves in near-Earth space.

Northrop Grumman has worked with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the Smithsonian Institution to transfer the operations control center of the orbiting Chandra space telescope to a facility in Burlington, Massachusetts, from its previous location near Harvard University's campus in Cambridge.

Axiom Space will construct a 14-acre headquarters campus at Houston Spaceport where the company plans to build a habitable space station module for NASA and train private astronauts for missions.