If you ask most satellite companies aside from SpaceX, they will tell you the world doesn’t have enough capacity for launching payloads into orbit. This is despite the blistering launch cadence we’ve seen around the world in recent years, led by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Customers in any sector will, of course, usually welcome competition. ..
Tag : space
NASA has released a document that provides some initial details about the proposed United States Space Academy, and it’s clear that the space agency wants to move quickly in establishing the institution. According to the document’s timeline, NASA seeks a groundbreaking for a permanent campus no later than next year, the first class to be ..
Pretty much every rocket company in the United States, save one, has embraced two fundamental tenets: reusability and diversification. Most famously, SpaceX branched out from reusable rockets to pursue and dominate a growing spectrum of space services: cargo delivery, human spaceflight, satellite production, broadband, and, perhaps soon, orbital data centers and in-space manufacturing. Blue Origin ..
Welcome to Edition 9.10 of the Rocket Report! This week we’re celebrating a historic moment in Europe when a German rocket company successfully put its launch vehicle into orbit. Isar Aerospace became the first purely commercial European company to reach orbit, and impressively it did so on just its second launch attempt. How quickly can ..
The European Space Agency is moving “full steam ahead” with development of a robotic mission to Venus after NASA officials determined they were unlikely to fulfill a commitment to provide a US-built radar instrument for the spacecraft, the mission’s project scientist said. The European orbiter, named Envision, will map the Venusian surface at 10 times ..
The commander and pilot of NASA’s Artemis II mission have gained a new distinction five months after splashing down from the Moon: They’re not fully retiring from the space agency. Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover are the first astronauts to join NASA’s emeritus program, enabling them to continue to support the work being done at ..
All of a sudden, French entrepreneur Hèlene Huby is seemingly everywhere. This week she is serving as one of two envoys, alongside astronaut Thomas Pesquet, at a high-profile International Space Summit convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. The government’s website for the event describes her as chief executive of “the fastest-growing space company in Europe.” ..
In 2007, a piece of space debris punched a bullet-like hole through the radiator panel of the US space shuttle Endeavor. The shuttle program ended in 2011, but the space debris problem has only intensified as we launch more and more satellite constellations, telescopes, and spacecraft into orbit. That’s why Chinese scientists have devised a new ..
Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018 by three students at a German university, successfully launched a privately-developed rocket into low-Earth orbit Saturday from a Norwegian spaceport inside the Arctic Circle. The two-stage rocket, named Spectrum, became the first fully commercial launch vehicle in Europe to reach orbit. With Saturday’s success, Isar is the clear leader among ..
The normally genteel world of international space policy turned ugly this week as several prominent US space companies—including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, K2, and Starcloud—pulled out of a high-profile French space summit organized by the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron. Politico first reported the diplomatic turmoil, saying that the White House “pressured” US space companies ..
