...the who's who,
and the what's what 
of the space industry

Space Careers

news Space News
Write a comment

WASHINGTON — Each of the satellites in the Space Development Agency’s mesh network known as the Transport Layer could have as many as five laser links so they can talk to other satellites, airplanes, ships and ground stations.

Downrange weather delays Crew-2 launch

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 18:00
Write a comment
Crew-2 on pad

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA has delayed the scheduled April 22 launch of the Crew-2 commercial crew mission by a day because of weather not at the launch site but at potential abort locations in the Atlantic Ocean.

Write a comment
UrtheCast Iris camera

TAMPA, Fla. — Private equity firm Antarctica Capital has formed a Canadian optical satellite imagery provider called EarthDaily Analytics, after buying parts of UrtheCast that sought creditor protection last year to avoid bankruptcy.

A company official for New York-based Antarctica Capital, which manages more than $2 billion of assets, told SpaceNews it is in talks about buying other businesses in complementary areas.

Write a comment
Scientists find CO2-rich liquid water in ancient meteorite
(A) Inclusions in a calcite grain in the Sutter's Mill meteorite recognized by X-ray nanotomography.
Write a comment

WASHINGTON — The Space Force is standing up a new procurement organization and taking other actions to speed up acquisitions of cutting-edge technology from the commercial space industry. But change won’t happen overnight due to the military’s deeply ingrained culture, said Gen.

Write a comment
SpaceNews illustration

The recent announcement that NASA has entered into discussions with China’s space agency over the sharing of ephemeris data for Mars orbital conjunction analysis is certainly positive and necessary.

Write a comment
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard seen on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard seen on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A

A crewed SpaceX mission to the International Space Station has been postponed by a day due to weather concerns downrange of the launch site, NASA said Wednesday.

Liftoff had been scheduled for Thursday but because of unfavorable conditions along the Atlantic coast, it will now be set for 5:49 am (0949 GMT) Friday.

"For crewed missions we need to look downrange to make sure weather's good for a potential launch escape, and for recovery of the crew," acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk told reporters.

The Crew-2 mission will carry four astronauts in the second routine taxi ride by SpaceX to ISS since the United States resumed crewed space flight, and the first with a European.

Write a comment
Washington (AFP) April 21, 2021
A crewed SpaceX mission to the International Space Station has been postponed by a day due to concerns over the weather, NASA said Wednesday. The flight had been scheduled for Thursday but because of an unfavorable weather forecast along the flight path it will now be set for 5:49 am (0949 GMT) Friday, the US space agency said. A SpaceX rocket is to carry four astronauts to the ISS in th

23 April: watch Mission Alpha launch live

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 11:30
Write a comment
Crew-2 training in Dragon spacecraft

Latest: NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 23 April at 10:49 BST (11:49 CEST) for the launch of the Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station due to unfavourable weather conditions along the flight path on Thursday.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

24 April: watch Mission Alpha docking live

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 11:30
Write a comment
Crew-2 training in Dragon spacecraft

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, saw the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

Write a comment
NASA’s NICER probes the squeezability of neutron stars
NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), at center, is an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Matter in the hearts of neutron stars—dense remnants of exploded massive stars—takes the most extreme form we can measure. Now, thanks to data from NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, scientists have discovered that this mysterious matter is less squeezable than some physicists predicted.

The finding is based on NICER's observations of PSR J0740+6620 (J0740 for short), the most massive known star, which lies over 3,600 light-years away in the northern constellation Camelopardalis. J0740 is in a binary star system with a white dwarf, the cooling remnant of a Sun-like star, and rotates 346 times per second. Previous observations place the neutron star's mass at about 2.1 times the Sun's.

"We're surrounded by normal matter, the stuff of our everyday experience, but there's much we don't know about how matter behaves, and how it is transformed, under extreme conditions," said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Write a comment
Hide and seek—how NASA’s Lucy mission team discovered Eurybates' satellite
Hubble images of Eurybates and its satellite on Jan. 3, 2020, when the satellite was visible (circled in green), and on Dec. 11, 2019, when the satellite was too close to Eurybates to be seen. Credit: NASA/Hubble/K. Noll/SwRI

On Jan. 9, 2020, NASA's Lucy mission officially announced that it would be visiting not seven, but eight asteroids. As it turns out, Eurybates, one of the asteroids along Lucy's path, has a small satellite.

Though searching for satellites is one of the mission's central goals, finding these tiny worlds before Lucy is launched gives the team the opportunity to investigate their orbits and plan for more detailed follow-up observations with the spacecraft.

Write a comment
Illustration of satellite coverage for telecommunications services.

HELSINKI — China is to oversee the construction and operation of a national satellite internet megaconstellation through coordinating the country’s major space actors. 

Recent comments by senior officials indicate that plans are moving ahead to alter earlier constellation plans by space sector state-owned enterprises and possibly make these part of a larger “Guowang” or “national network” satellite internet project.

Arrival of world-first test facility

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 09:39
Write a comment
Arrival of world-first test facility Image: Arrival of world-first test facility

Alpha mission

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 09:05
Page 1612 of 1777