TAMPA, Fla. — Starfish Space, a startup founded by former Blue Origin and NASA engineers, is developing space tugs to help manage rapidly growing megaconstellations.

SpaceX is planning to launch tens of thousands of Starlink broadband satellites to join the more than 1,600 it already has in orbit, and a growing number of constellation operators are following suit.

HELSINKI — China’s Zhurong rover descended onto the surface of Mars late May 21, a week after the vehicle’s historic landing in Utopia Planitia.

China's Mars rover drove from its landing platform and began exploring the surface on Saturday, state-run Xinhua news agency said, making the country only the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet.

The launch last July of the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which carried the Zhurong rover, marked a major milestone in China's space program.

Tianwen-1 touched down on a vast northern lava plain known as the Utopia Planitia a week ago and beamed back its first photos of the surface a few days later.

The Mars probe and rover are expected to spend around three months taking photos, harvesting geographical data, and collecting and analyzing rock samples.

The six-wheeled, solar-powered, 240-kilogram (530-pound) Zhurong is named after a Chinese mythical fire god.

Updated 1:20 p.m. Eastern with company statement.

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made its first flight to space in more than two years May 22, completing the first in a series of four suborbital flights planned by the company over the next several months.

Beijing (XNA) May 22, 2021
China's first Mars rover, Zhurong, drove down from its landing platform to the Martian surface Saturday, leaving the country's first "footprints" on the red planet. Zhurong's first successful drive made China the second country after the United States to land and operate a rover on Mars. The six-wheeled solar-powered rover, resembling a blue butterfly and with a mass of 240 kg, slowly trun

Tempe AZ (SPX) May 21, 2021
NASA has selected an Arizona State University-designed spacecraft to fly as an auxiliary payload aboard a rocket launching between 2022 and 2025. It is among 14 small research satellites, called CubeSats, that were chosen for this opportunity through NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative. The ASU CubeSat, named LightCube, is about the size of a toaster and will be deployed to low-Earth orbit (L

Guildford UK (SPX) May 21, 2021
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to lead a Phase A/B1 Study under ESA's Moonlight initiative that will shape the service provision and infrastructure to provide sustainable commercial Lunar data-relay services for communication and navigation around the Moon. The Moonlight Phase A/B1 Study will define the service infrastructure and

Moscow (Sputnik) May 21, 2021
Musk also suggested that humanity could expand its reach to other planets in our Solar System that lie beyond Mars with the help of an antimatter-powered spacecraft. Renowned tech entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has recently doubled down on his calls for establishing a human presence on other planets. According to The Independent, Musk voiced his thoughts on the subject dur

Washington DC (UPI) May 21, 2021
Virgin Galactic completed its first successful space flight in more than two years Saturday. "It was picture perfect," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier told The Verge after the flight was completed. "We're gonna go through the data deeply and thoroughly as we always do." In a statement, Colglazier called the flight a "major step forward for both Virgin Galactic and human spaceflight

Moscow (Sputnik) May 21, 2021
Russia's state space agency Roscosmos revealed the design of future satellites and orbital stations equipped with space nuclear-powered tug technology at the New Knowledge forum in Moscow on Saturday. Alexander Bloshenko, executive director for advanced programs and science at Roscosmos, presented two images of future spacecraft with the Zeus nuclear-powered tug - one with rotary magnetopl