WASHINGTON — Blue Origin announced May 5 that it will fly people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for the first time July 20, and will auction off one of the seats on that launch.

The company said that, after years of test flights without anyone on board, it will start flying people on New Shepard.

SAN FRANCISCO — KSAT is rapidly installing antennas around the world to keep pace with the dramatic rise in small satellite activity.

In 2021 alone, Norway-based KSAT is on track to add 42 antennas to KSATlite, its network that supports small satellite constellations.

WASHINGTON — An unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile test launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, experienced a ground abort during the terminal countdown, the Air Force Global Strike Command said May 5.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force this month will complete a design review of a previously flown SpaceX Falcon 9 booster that flew a military GPS satellite to orbit last fall. The booster is expected to fly another GPS satellite sometime in June.

An X-ray telescope designed to search for supermassive black holes could be built using a novel 3D-printing technique called plasma metal deposition.

WASHINGTON — Loft Orbital announced May 5 it won a small business innovation research (SBIR) contract from the U.S. Space Force to support the development of an edge computer that can analyze data in space.

Washington DC (UPI) May 4, 2021
The Dream Chaser spaceplane, a cargo spacecraft built and operated by Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp., is to begin launching and landing in Florida in 2022, NASA and the company announced Tuesday. The uncrewed, robotic spaceplane will be launched aboard a United Launch Alliance rocket from Kennedy Space Center for flights to the International Space Station. Once it docks and del

Long Beach CA (SPX) May 05, 2021
Virgin Orbit, Richard Branson's responsive space company, reports that its UK subsidiary, Virgin Orbit UK Ltd., has signed a new manufacturing agreement with AVS Added Value Solutions UK (AVS) to build the Transportable Ground Operating System (TGOS) that will support Virgin Orbit's launch activities from Spaceport Cornwall. This manufacturing work, which will begin shortly in AVS' facilities in

Santiago (AFP) May 4, 2021
As sci-fi thriller "Inception" topped box offices across the world, audiences were delighted and appalled by its futuristic story of a criminal gang invading people's dreams to steal valuable data. More than a decade on, the technology envisioned by filmmaker Christopher Nolan is likely not far off, according to experts in Chile, who have moved the security debate beyond burglar alarms to sa

Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 04, 2021
During a brief swing by Venus, NASA's Parker Solar Probe detected a natural radio signal that revealed the spacecraft had flown through the planet's upper atmosphere. This was the first direct measurement of the Venusian atmosphere in nearly 30 years - and it looks quite different from Venus past. A study published Monday confirms that Venus' upper atmosphere undergoes puzzling changes over a so