San Antonio TX (SPX) Jan 26, 2023
NASA's Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On Nov. 1, 2023, the Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission will get a close-up view of a small main belt asteroid to conduct an engineering test of the spacecraft's innovative asteroid-tracking navigation system. The Lucy mission was already on course to break records by its planned visit of n

Munich, Germany (SPX) Jan 26, 2023
European launch service company Isar Aerospace, and U.S.-based Spaceflight Inc., the leading global launch services provider, announced they have signed a multi-launch services agreement. Under the agreement, Spaceflight secured one dedicated launch in 2026 to a sun-synchronous orbit taking off from Andoya, Norway and an option to add an additional dedicated launch to occur in 2025. "We've

Wallops Island VA (SPX) Jan 26, 2023
A revolutionary NASA flight safety system has enabled a new era of space transportation with the successful flight of Rocket Lab USA's Electron rocket Jan. 24, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. This mission, the first Electron launch from the United States, was enabled by NASA's work in developing the NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit (NAFTU), a critical piece of fligh

Chongqing, China (XNA) Jan 26, 2023
China plans to use its new China Compound Eye facility in Chongqing to observe asteroids and Earth-like planets hundreds of millions of kilometers away as part of its planetary defense work. The Chongqing Innovation Center under the Beijing Institute of Technology, which designed and built the China Compound Eye, recently released its first 3D radar map of an area of moon craters taken by the hi

Herndon VA (SPX) Jan 26, 2023
HawkEye 360 Inc., the world's leading commercial provider of space-based radio frequency (RF) data and analytics, announced that its Cluster 6 next-generation satellites have successfully deployed to orbit aboard the inaugural Rocket Lab Electron flight from Launch Complex 2 at Virginia Space's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. Communication with the satellit

Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican representing Colorado Springs, was named chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee.

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ESA’s director general says the agency does not have the budgetary capacity nor the political intention to send its astronauts to China’s space station.

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Satellite imagery confirms an enormous iceberg, around five times the size of Malta, has finally calved from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. The new berg, estimated to be around 1550 sq km and around 150 m thick, calved when the crack known as Chasm-1 fully extended northwards severing the west part of the ice shelf.

This crack was first revealed to be extending in early 2012 after having been dormant for some decades. After several years of desperately clinging on, image data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions visually confirm the calving event.

U.S.-based launch services provider Spaceflight said Jan. 25 it has booked a dedicated launch in 2026 from Isar Aerospace, the German rocket developer aiming to perform the first test flight of its Spectrum vehicle this year.

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