NASA has selected two Earth science missions for development, one focused on studying the atmosphere and the other on terrestrial ecosystems and ice.

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Depending on when you read this, NASA will be weeks — perhaps days — from one of its biggest missions in years. On Jan. 17, NASA rolled out the Space Launch System rocket, with Orion spacecraft mounted on top, to the launch pad for the Artemis 2 mission. The launch will be the first time […]

The post Over the moon and under the radar appeared first on SpaceNews.

China appears set for an in-flight abort test of its new-generation Mengzhou spacecraft next week in a key step for the country’s human spaceflight plans.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Tomorrow.io raised $175 million to fund DeepSky, a satellite constellation designed to gathering vast quantities of atmospheric data for artificial intelligence models. With the money provided by private equity investors Stonecourt Capital and HarbourVest Partners, Tomorrow.io plans to rapidly expand its “space infrastructure and intelligence platform, enabling unprecedented global atmospheric sensing and […]

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Golden Dome deputy program manager Marcia Holmes: ‘We are going to be easier to work with’

The post Pentagon casts Golden Dome as model for faster, risk-tolerant defense buying appeared first on SpaceNews.

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved plans for Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A as SpaceX shifts Falcon 9 launches away from the historic pad.

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In this episode of Space Minds, Mike Gruss sits down with a panel of experts at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center to discuss the future of the United States […]

The post The future of the Space Force in a competitive, congested and contested space environment appeared first on SpaceNews.

Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy said the Space Force is taking a closer look at companies developing technologies to mine asteroids.

The post Deep space, dim objects: Why asteroid mining caught the Space Force’s eye appeared first on SpaceNews.

Quindar’s software aims to cut cost and complexity of satellite ground operations

The post Satellite servicing startup Starfish taps Quindar for mission operations software appeared first on SpaceNews.

Voyager Technologies and Max Space, a company working on expandable habitats, plan to work together to see how that technology could be used for lunar exploration.

The post Voyager Technologies and Max Space partner on lunar infrastructure appeared first on SpaceNews.

Logos Space Services has secured U.S. regulatory approval to deploy up to 4,178 low Earth orbit broadband satellites.

The post FCC clears Logos to deploy more than 4,000 broadband satellites appeared first on SpaceNews.

Few modern systems are as consequential — or as exposed — as the Global Positioning System. A temporary loss of access to its positioning, navigation and timing signals would ripple through the global economy and severely impair military operations. Yet despite repeated warnings that GPS signals can be jammed, spoofed or denied — often using […]

The post Space Force may be done with R-GPS, but Congress isn’t appeared first on SpaceNews.

Correction: Morpheus Space is ramping up to producing 100 GO-2 propulsion systems annually. SAN FRANCISCO — Morpheus Space raised $15 million in a Series A+ funding round announced Feb. 5. “This funding is intended to accelerate our production as we focus on bringing our GO-2 Electric Propulsion System fully to market,” Morpheus CEO Kevin Lausten […]

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The award was made under NGA’s Luno program.

The post Vantor wins $5.3 million NGA contract to spot terrain changes using commercial satellite data appeared first on SpaceNews.

The House Science Committee unanimously approved a NASA authorization bill Feb. 4 after adopting dozens of amendments.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Viridian Space Corp. signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The five-year CRADA will provide the Southern California startup with access to testing facilities and satellite-operations expertise at AFRL’s Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. “There seems to be a good collaborative opportunity for testing […]

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ExoAnalytic tool aims to show when fire-monitoring satellites can actually see the ground

The post FireSat adds orbit-visualization software to help firefighters plan around satellite passes appeared first on SpaceNews.

Light is the fastest phenomenon in the universe, clocking in at just under 300,000 kilometers per second. The telescopes that observe that light, from radio waves to gamma rays, are built at rather slower speeds. Take, as one example, the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA began feasibility studies for the mission in the mid-1990s and […]

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In the consumer electronics playbook, custom silicon is the final step in the marathon: you use off-the-shelf components to prove a product, achieve mass scale and only then invest in proprietary chips to create differentiation, improve operations, and optimize margins. In the modern satellite communications (SATCOM) ecosystem, this script has been flipped. For the industry’s […]

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A Senate committee has delayed consideration of a bill intended to expedite Federal Communications Commission reviews of satellite license applications amid concerns that the proposal may be too permissive.

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After helping place proliferated LEO constellations at the center of U.S. military space planning, the SmallSat Alliance is now tackling how these networks can be used together as a unified system.

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Gen. Shawn Bratton, the Space Force’s vice chief of space operations, spoke with SpaceNews’ Sandra Erwin as part of an event focused on the Space Force 2040 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center on Jan. 21. Here are six takeaways from their conversation: Planning for 2040 means more space superiority A long-range planning initiative […]

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NASA officials defended their preparations for the Artemis 2 mission after a fueling test experienced the same type of hydrogen leaks that bedeviled Artemis 1 more than three years ago.

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In space procurement, there are few phrases that carry more weight than “flight heritage.” Once a supplier claims it, the rest of the room can relax. The hardware has flown, goes the thinking. It worked. The risk of using such hardware is vanishingly small, even absent. This is understandable. Space is famously unforgiving, and if […]

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