The Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) is a U.S. weather forecasting unit staffed by the National Weather Service (NWS) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) which provides pertinent information on the current and expected state of the atmosphere during human spaceflight operations. It is located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Meteorological information for the broader space program is provided by the 45th Space Wing's 45th Weather Squadron of the U.S. Air Force.

The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), formerly the Space Environment Center (SEC), is a laboratory and service center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) located in Boulder, Colorado. SWPC continually monitors and forecasts Earth's space environment, providing solar-terrestrial information. SWPC is the official source of space weather alerts and warnings for the United States.

The Space Weather Prediction Center is one of the nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events, conducts research in solar-terrestrial physics, and develops techniques for forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances.

The SWPC Forecast Center is jointly operated by NOAA and the U.S. Air Force and is the national and world warning center for disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in the space environment. SWPC works with many national and international partners who contribute with data and observations.

The Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace or ISAE is the name for the French aerospace engineering school.

It is located in Toulouse, France. The "Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace" (ISAE) was created in 2007 from the merger of two prestigious French Engineer School: SUPAERO (founded in 1909) and ENSICA (founded in 1945).

The Institute provides high-level Graduate Programs in engineering for Space and Aerospace domains, Master’s degrees, Postgraduate Specialized Masters, PhD degrees. This opens to the  students a wide range of career opportunities: engineering, research and development, logistics, consulting, finance, etc.

ISAE also develops a very active research policy.

United Space Alliance (USA) is a spaceflight operations company. USA is a joint venture which was established in August 1995 as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), equally owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The company is headquartered in Houston, USA. As of 2008 it employed approximately 8,800 people in the USA (in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and the Washington, D.C. area).

International Launch Services (ILS) is a U.S.-Russian joint venture with exclusive rights to the worldwide sale of commercial Proton rocket launch services from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

ILS was formed in 1995 as a private spaceflight partnership between Lockheed Martin, Khrunichev and Energia.

Proton (Прото́н) (formal designation: UR-500) is an expendable launch system used for both commercial and Russian government space launches.

The first Proton rocket was launched in 1965 and the launch system is still in use as of 2012, which makes it one of the most successful heavy boosters in the history of spaceflight. All Protons are built at the Khrunichev plant in Moscow, and then transported for launch to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where they are brought to the launch pad horizontally and then raised into vertical position for launch.

The launch capacity to low Earth orbit is about 22 tonnes. The geostationary transfer capacity is about 5–6 tonnes.

The commercial launches are marketed by International Launch Services (ILS). In a typical launch of a commercial communications satellite destined for geostationary orbit, a Proton M/Briz-M can place a spacecraft with mass at separation of 4,140 kg into an orbit with an apogee of 35,786 kilometres, a perigee of 6,257 kilometres and an inclination of 19.7°.

Like many Soviet boosters, the names of recurring payloads became associated with their launchers. Thus the moniker "Proton" originates from a series of large scientific Proton satellites, which were among the rocket's first payloads. 

Khrunichev Research and Production Space Center is a Moscow-based producer of spacecraft and space-launch systems, including the Proton and Rokot rockets.

The company's history dates back to 1916, when an automobile factory was established outside Moscow. It soon switched production to airplanes and during World War II produced Ilyushin Il-4 and Tupolev Tu-2 bombers. A design bureau, OKB-23, was added to the company in 1951. In 1959, the company started developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and later spacecraft and space launch vehicles. The company designed and produced all Soviet space stations, including Mir. OKB-23, renamed to Salyut Design Bureau, became an independent company in 1988. In 1993, the Khrunichev Plant and the Salyut Design Bureau were joined again to form Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center.

In the 1990s, the company entered the International Launch Services joint-venture to market launches on its Proton rocket. Khrunichev subsequently became a successful launch service provider on the international space launch market.

The Rokot (Russian: Рокот meaning Roar), also transliterated Rockot, is a Russian space launch vehicle that can launch a payload of 1,950 kilograms into a 200 kilometre high Earth orbit with 63° inclination.

It is a derivative of the UR-100N (SS-19 Stiletto) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

It is supplied and operated by Eurockot Launch Services. The first launches started in the 1990s from Baikonur Cosmodrome out of a silo. Later commercial launches commenced from Plesetsk Cosmodrome using a launch ramp specially rebuilt from one for the Kosmos-3M rocket.

Galaxy (previously Guardian) was a prototype space habitat designed by the American firm Bigelow Aerospace. It was intended to be the third spacecraft launched by the company in their efforts to create a commercial space station. Like other modules made by Bigelow Aerospace, Galaxy is based on the inflatable TransHab design by NASA, and was to be used for advanced systems testing before the company launched human-rated vehicles.

This project was cancelled in 2007.

The Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) is a research centre in astronomy and astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University (United Kingdom). The institute was formed in 1992.