WASHINGTON — Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson often reminds audiences that America is “the best in the world at space, and adversaries know it.” But nobody can predict how long that advantage will last. The Pentagon warned in the 2018 National Defense Strategy that “new threats to commercial and military uses of space are emerging” [...]
WASHINGTON — As NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft enters interstellar space, project officials have high hopes that it and its twin spacecraft will continue to operate for as long as a decade. NASA announced Dec. 10 that Voyager 2 passed what is known as the heliopause, the boundary between where the solar wind from the sun [...]
WASHINGTON — Spacecraft manufacturers have complained of stress on their supplier base as operators purchase fewer traditional geostationary satellites. One company in France is bucking that trend, however. Sodern, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup that builds star trackers — components that enable satellites to orient themselves in space — plans to double its annual production rate [...]
WASHINGTON — A NASA spacecraft originally built as part of the previous effort to return humans to the moon is now playing a key role in the new effort at human lunar return, including aiding commercial landers. One element of the Vision for Space Exploration, announced by President George W. Bush in 2004, was a [...]
This op-ed originally appeared in the Dec. 3, 2018 issue of SpaceNews magazine. In recent years, there has been a boom of announcements for satellite constellations comprising satellites weighing as little as 3 kilograms to address a growing market of machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) via satellite. Traditionally, this market has been serviced [...]
Updated Dec. 8 at 12:29 a.m. Eastern. WASHINGTON — Japanese startup Axelspace secured $22.8 million from investors to fund a constellation of specialized remote-sensing satellites, the company said Dec. 7. Tokyo-based Axelspace raised the Series B funds from 31VENTURES – Global Brain – Growth I Joint Venture, with participation from the Innovation Network Corp. of [...]
WASHINGTON — With a two-week extension of the stopgap spending bill funding much of the federal government enacted, the outgoing chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA says he’s hopeful to get a final spending bill approved before that bill expires. President Trump signed into law Dec. 7 a bill that extends for [...]
HELSINKI — China launched its Chang’e-4 moon mission Dec. 7, successfully sending the lander and rover into a lunar transfer orbit ahead of an unprecedented attempt at a landing on the far side of the moon early in the New Year. Liftoff of the Long March 3B launch vehicle carrying Chang’e-4 occurred at 1:23 p.m. [...]
WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s eighth and final Iridium Next launch has been delayed nine days to Jan. 7. The new launch date, announced Dec. 7 by customer Iridium Communications, was driven by the additional two weeks SpaceX ended up needing to launch Spaceflight Industries’ “SmallSat Express” dedicated rideshare mission. That mission — carrying 64 small satellites aboard [...]
