OneWeb has signed an insurance policy worth more than $1 billion to cover the remaining 10 launches for its broadband constellation, after its previous policy expired following delays caused by its 2020 bankruptcy.

Virgin Orbit is looking to grow its military business by proving that rockets launched from airplanes in flight can be instruments of national security.

SpaceNews

The visibility and attention space missions often get work to the industry’s advantage, from helping to attract top engineering talent to top investment dollars. But it also comes with heightened scrutiny that risks tripping up young space companies rushing to the commercial market.

Firefly Aerospace is ready for the first orbital launch attempt of its Alpha rocket on a flight that is as much about collecting vehicle data as it is about reaching orbit.

SpaceNews

New Haven CT (SPX) Sep 02, 2021
As scientists prepare for crewed research missions to nearby planets and moons, they've identified a need for something beyond rovers and rockets. They need accurate weather forecasts. Without them, any trip to the surface may be one dust storm away from disaster. A new Yale study helps lay the foundation for more accurate, otherworldly forecasts by taking a phenomenon related to Ear

Tempe AZ (SPX) Sep 02, 2021
In the early solar system, terrestrial planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are thought to have formed from planetesimals, small early planets. These early planets grew over time, through collisions and mergers, to make them the size they are today. The material released from these violent collisions is commonly thought to have escaped and orbited around the sun, bombarding the grow

Hiroshima, Japan (SPX) Sep 02, 2021
The Universe has countless stars, which come in different masses. The most common ones are the low-mass stars, including our Sun. Massive stars refer to those whose mass is more than eight times the mass of the Sun. The life of low-mass stars is quite long. For instance, our Sun can live for 10 billion years. However, massive stars can only live up to tens of millions of years. Some of the

Leiden, Netherlands (SPX) Sep 02, 2021
Conventional theory states that light stars like our Sun gently blow off their layers when they die, while heavy stars explode as a supernova. But for some reason, we are so far failing to find supernovae from stars heavier than eighteen solar masses. Now a team led by SRON astronomers finds a new clue that fuels this apparent mystery. Publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The rese

Vienna, Austria (SPX) Sep 01, 2021
There is a dictum to "never change a running system". New methods can however be far superior to older ones. While to date chemical reactions are mainly accelerated by catalytic materials that comprise several hundreds of atoms, the use of single atoms could provide a new approach for catalysis. An international research team, led by the TU Wien, Austria, has now developed a new method for

After many technical and programmatic challenges, the first satellite of the next generation of the Meteosat family has taken a major step towards its first flight, currently scheduled for launch in autumn 2022.