Washington DC (UPI) Jul 2, 2021
The Pentagon this week awarded Raytheon a contract worth up to $2 billion to develop a new nuclear cruise missile. The contract, announced Thursday, calls for development of the new missiles through 2027, when a first flight could occur and a decision about production may be made. The series of air-launched, Long-Range Standoff weapons would replace the Air Launched Cruise or AGM

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 30, 2021
Fifty active-duty Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel have been chosen to transfer to the U.S. Space Force and will join the branch in July, the Space Force said on Wednesday. The group will test integration efforts to bring additional personnel into the new military branch, founded in 2019 with a mandate to deter aggression and protect the interests of the United States in space.

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 1, 2021
Britain invested $4.8 million for smarter missile systems - allowing munitions to communicate and react quickly to changing threats - the British Ministry of Defense said on Thursday. The contract was awarded to the Defense Science Technology Laboratory for the Co-operative Strike Weapons Technology Demonstrator, which the British government is charging with improving current systems

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jul 05, 2021
Some 50 miles up, where Earth's atmosphere blends into space, the air itself hums with an electric current. Scientists call it the atmospheric dynamo, an Earth-sized electric generator. It's taken hundreds of years for scientists to lay the groundwork to understand it, but the principles that keep it running are only just now being revealed in detail. Following up on its predecessor's 2013

Washington July 1, 2021
The United States expressed concern on Thursday over a report that China is building more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Washington Post, citing a study of commercial satellite images by a California-based group, reported on Thursday that the silos were being built in a desert near the northwestern city of Yumen. The James Martin Center for Nonproliferati

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
NASA's X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology X-plane is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without producing sonic booms - those loud, startling noises which can be disruptive to humans and animals. Currently, commercial aircraft aren't allowed to fly faster than the speed of sound over land because of the objectionable sonic booms they cause for those on the ground. This expe

Livermore CA (SPX) Jul 05, 2021
When the U.S. Space Force's Tactically Responsive Launch-2 (TacRL-2) mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on June 13, it carried a payload designed and built in record time by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). LLNL provided a three-mirror reflective telescope and sensor for the payload, which they designed, integrated, tested and delivered within four months of th

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 02, 2021
The global cryosphere-all of the areas with frozen water on Earth-shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles), a area about the size of Lake Superior, per year on average, between 1979 and 2016 as a result of climate change, according to a new study. This research is the first to make a global estimate of the surface area of the Earth covered by sea ice, snow cover and f

WASHINGTON — The James Webb Space Telescope is one step closer to launch after a review of its Ariane launch vehicle, while NASA continues a separate review of the name of the spacecraft itself.

Orbital transfer and servicing providers are bracing for a space tug of war as they jostle for position in an increasingly crowded market.

Newcomers are flooding into a space tug industry that has only emerged in recent years, pushing their own ideas to give operators greater flexibility for deploying and maintaining satellites.