Virgin Galactic schedules next SpaceShipTwo test flight for May 22
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic will attempt its next SpaceShipTwo suborbital test flight as soon as May 22 after resolving concerns about the maintenance of its carrier aircraft.
The company said in a May 20 statement that the VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane will make a powered flight to the edge of space May 22, pending weather conditions and final technical checks, from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Op-ed | Beijing’s Troubling Space Ambitions
On May 14, China became the second country in the world to land and operate a rover on the surface of Mars. China’s Mars landing follows the April 28 launch of the first components of its next space station.
NASA AI technology could speed up fault diagnosis process in spacecraft
New artificial intelligence technology could speed up physical fault diagnosis in spacecraft and spaceflight systems, improving mission efficiency by reducing down-time.
Research in artificial intelligence for spacecraft resilience (RAISR) is software developed by Pathways intern Evana Gizzi, who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. With RAISR, artificial intelligence could diagnose faults real-time in spacecraft and spaceflight systems in general.
"The spacecraft reporting a fault is like a car with a check engine light on," Gizzi said. "You know there is an issue, but can't necessarily explain the cause. That's where the RAISR algorithm comes in, diagnosing the cause as a loose gas cap."
Right now, the ability to make inferences about what is happening that go beyond traditional 'if-then-else' fault trees is something only humans can do, Gizzi said.
With ULA’s new rocket Vulcan behind schedule, Space Force agrees to let Atlas 5 fill in
WASHINGTON — What would have been the first national security mission for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket will be flown by Atlas 5, the company confirmed May 19.
That mission, known as USSF-51, was awarded to ULA in August 2020 and is scheduled to launch in late 2022.
Europe making progress on sovereign LEO constellation as OneWeb and Starlink race ahead
TAMPA, Fla. — The industry consortium devising a satellite network to keep the European Union from falling too far behind the megaconstellation goldrush is weeks away from nailing down key criteria.
Rare 4000-year comets can cause meteor showers on Earth
Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether so that their meteor showers are hard to detect. From a new meteor shower survey published in the journal Icarus, researchers now report that they can detect showers from the debris in the path of comets that pass close to Earth orbit and are known to return as infrequently as once every 4,000 years.
"This creates a situational awareness for potentially hazardous comets that were last near Earth orbit as far back as 2,000 BC," said meteor astronomer and lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute.
Talking to the moon: Europe pitches lunar satellites plan
The European Space Agency presented a vision Thursday to put satellites in orbit around the moon that would facilitate future missions to Earth's closest neighbor.
Video: Bringing connectivity to the moon
As international teams across the world forge plans to revisit the moon, ESA is elaborating how best to facilitate this exploration.
As part of its moonlight initiative, the agency is encouraging European space companies to put a constellation of telecommunications and navigation satellites around the moon.
To succeed, the proposed lunar missions will require reliable navigation and telecommunication capabilities. Building these independently would be costly, complex and inefficient.
If this work were outsourced to a consortium of space companies, each individual mission would become more cost-efficient.
Having one system dedicated to lunar telecommunications and navigation could reduce design complexity, liberating missions to concentrate on their core activities.
Because missions could rely on this dedicated telecommunications and navigation service, they would be lighter. This would make space for more scientific instruments or other cargo.
An accurate and reliable telecommunications and navigation service would enable missions to land wherever they wanted. Radio astronomers could set up observatories on the far side of the moon.
Rovers could trundle over the lunar surface more speedily. It could even enable the teleoperation of rovers and other equipment from Earth.
SpaceX's 22nd Commercial Resupply Mission to ISS
The 22nd SpaceX cargo resupply mission carrying scientific research and technology demonstrations launches to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than June 3. Experiments aboard include studying how water bears tolerate space, whether microgravity affects symbiotic relationships, analyzing the formation of kidney stones, and more.
Highligh NASA fires up fourth RS-25 engine test
NASA conducted its fourth RS-25 single-engine hot fire of the year May 20, a continuation of its seven-part test series to support development and production of engines for the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on future missions to the Moon.
The engine was fired for more than 8 minutes (500 seconds) on the A-1 Test Stand at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, the same amount 
