Paris, France (SPX) Dec 20, 2021
Virgin Orbit, the responsive launch and space solutions company that has announced a planned business combination with NextGen Acquisition Corp. II, has announced an agreement to acquire a 17.5% stake in geospatial analytics company Hypersat LLC. This investment will further expand Virgin Orbit's space solutions business by providing highly accurate electro-optic and hyperspectral imagery

Paris (AFP) Dec 18, 2021
The much-delayed launch of the James Webb space telescope will go ahead on December 24, NASA and the company overseeing the launch confirmed on Saturday. The project, begun in 1989, was originally expected to deploy the instrument - which will be the largest and most powerful telescope ever to be launched into space - in the early 2000s. But multiple problems forced delays and a tripli

SpaceX successfully launched the Turksat 5B Turkish communications satellite Dec. 18, less than 16 hours after launching a batch of Starlink broadband spacecraft.

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Moscow (AFP) Dec 19, 2021
After a decade-long hiatus, Russia is relaunching an ambitious bid for dominion over the world's budding space tourism industry, jostling with zealous billionaires, the United States, and rising China. Russia flaunted its comeback this month dispatching two cosmic adventurers - Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant - to the International Space Station (ISS) in its first lau

El Segundo CA (SPX) Dec 17, 2021
Raytheon Intelligence and Space, a Raytheon Technologies business, has been awarded a $67 million contract to demonstrate an Electro-Optical Infrared Weather System, or EWS, Prototype with the ability to deliver operational data for the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command under an Other Transaction Authority contract. A successful prototype demonstration will provide Electro-optical/Infrare

Boulder CO (SPX) Dec 15, 2021
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has received $6.5 million in funding from NASA to launch a roughly shoebox-sized satellite into space carrying an instrument designed to measure the howling thermospheric winds, which can gust more than 300 miles per hour through the highest reaches of the Earth's atmosphere. The blustery winds in the thermosphere - the upper layer of the

Bethesda MD (SPX) Dec 17, 2021
Apparently, China sees the Moon as a future source of fuel for terrestrial power and space dominance. At the moment Chinese nuclear scientists are studying lunar surface material samples brought back by its Chang'e 5 lunar exploration mission late last year. One sample is believed to contain helium-3, an isotope. This particular isotope is very rare on Earth, but thought to be abundant in

Azusa CA (SPX) Dec 17, 2021
The Northrop Grumman Corporation and Ball Aerospace team successfully achieved three critical milestones on production of its Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next Gen OPIR) Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) Engineering Development Unit (EDU) payload. The missile warning sensor payload is being developed for the U.S. Space Force's GEO missile warning satellites built by spacecraft pr

Clemson SC (SPX) Dec 15, 2021
Clemson researcher Chris Saski admits sending the University's iconic Tiger Paw to space aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is, quite literally, "an out-of-this-world experience." But it's the potential for the experiments in the flight hardware to which the Paw is attached that truly excites him. Saski's cotton regeneration research, adorned with Clemson stickers, intends to take off

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 14, 2021
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2021 Arctic report card shows a region transformed by human-caused climate change, a thawing of a once reliably frozen region. "The Arctic Report Card continues to show how the impacts of human-caused climate change are propelling the Arctic region into a dramatically different state than it was in just a few decades ago," said NOAA