“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Those immortal words belong to history. But in the long story of human evolution, 50 years is only the blink of an eye, hardly of import when measured against the rhythm of civilizations. The expanding “bubble” of human activities in space. The wave front, now [...]
WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials will attend a White House meeting on Tuesday to discuss preparations for the standup of a Space Force as soon as Congress authorizes a new service. A White House source told SpaceNews the Oct. 15 meeting will be a “routine DoD update” related to the anticipated establishment of a new [...]
SAN FRANCISCO – LeoLabs, the Silicon Valley space mapping startup, announced Oct. 14, initial operation of the Kiwi Space Radar, the firm’s third space surveillance radar and first with updated technology to track debris as small as two centimeters in low Earth orbit. “We founded the company on the promise that we would deliver this [...]
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler says that satellite operators didn’t jump on the cloud services bandwagon as fast as the rest of the telecommunications industry. “A few years ago I would say we wouldn’t really think about working with cloud providers, as an industry,” said Spengler, whose company operates around 50 geostationary [...]
HELSINKI — China is set to attempt a return-to-flight of its Long March 5 rocket at the end of the year, with success required for the country to proceed with its major space ambitions. Two cargo transport ships left port on the Yangtze river late Friday Eastern for the northern city of Tianjin. They are [...]
HOUSTON — Stratolaunch, the venture founded by the late Paul Allen to develop an air-launch system, has “transitioned” ownership, but the company is not disclosing who the new owner is. In a brief statement Oct. 11, Stratolaunch said that it “transitioned ownership and is continuing regular operations.” The company had been owned by Vulcan Inc., [...]
Should dominance be our immediate space security priority? The short answer is no. Why? Doing so jeopardizes achieving the more urgent task of protecting our critical satellites. Dominance may be desirable but, for now, the United States must tackle the weightier task of preventing Russia and China from disabling our key satellites. Lt. Gen. Robert [...]
SAN FRANCISCO – Descartes Labs, a company that specializes in applying machine learning to geospatial datasets, raised $20 million in a Series B-2 bridge financing round, bringing the Santa Fe, New Mexico, firm’s total raised to nearly $60 million. With the additional funding announced Oct. 11, Descartes will pull in data from a diverse group [...]
WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to speak during the opening ceremony of the 70th International Astronautical Congress here Oct. 21, the IAC’s organizers announced this week. Pence chairs the National Space Council the Trump administration reestablished in 2017 to guide and coordinate civil, commercial, national security and international space policy matters. [...]
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk eased two weeks of tension between them Oct. 10, saying they were on the same page regarding development of commercial crew systems. Bridenstine toured SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and told media afterwards that development of vehicles to carry astronauts to [...]
