Tag: commercial-space
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Arianespace announces competition for free nanosatellite launch
Spectators in Kourou, French Guiana, watch as an Ariane 5 rocket launches three commercial satellites from the Guiana Space Center in August 2020. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin Arianespace announced this week it is organizing a contest open to startups, labs, and universities for a free launch of a…
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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour meets Falcon 9 rocket for launch next week
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft arrives at the company’s Falcon 9 hangar April 13 near pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX trucked its Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft — refurbished with a new heat shield and structural enhancements — across the Cape Canaveral spaceport this week for attachment to a…
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‘It’s time’: Jeff Bezos hails Blue Origin’s fiery rehearsal for crewed suborbital spaceflight
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, checks out the New Shepard suborbital rocket booster on its landing pad. (Blue Origin via Instagram) Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture flew a mannequin into space today during the 15th test flight for its New Shepard reusable suborbital spaceship — but for…
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Blue Origin practices crew operations on suborbital test flight
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated April 15 with Bezos tweet. Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster lifts off at 12:51 p.m. EDT (11:51 a.m. CDT; 1651 GMT) Wednesday. Credit: Blue Origin Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, took another step toward launching people to the edge of space Wednesday with a suborbital test flight of…
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Astrobotic selects SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch robotic lunar lander
A Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off in April 2019 with the Arabsat 6A commercial communications satellite. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Spaceflight Now A commercial lunar lander built by Astrobotic will launch from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in late 2023 to deliver a water-hunting NASA rover to the moon’s…
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Blue Origin to rehearse for human passengers on suborbital flight
A view of Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas. Credit: Blue Origin Finally on the cusp of launching people to the edge of space, Blue Origin plans to use a suborbital test flight of its New Shepard booster and crew capsule Wednesday to rehearse boarding and recovery procedures for future missions with paying passengers.…
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Northrop Grumman servicer docks with active satellite in geosynchronous orbit
A visible narrow field-of-view camera on the MEV 2 spacecraft captured this view of Intelsat 10-02 from a range of about 100 feet, or 30 meters. Credit: Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman’s second robotic life extension spacecraft docked with an Intelsat satellite in geosynchronous orbit Monday, the first link-up between a commercial servicing mission and an…
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SpaceX to ramp up Vandenberg launch cadence with Starlink missions
File photo of a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on Jan. 11, 2019. Credit: SpaceX After a lull in launches from America’s primary West Coast rocket base, SpaceX is set to resume a regular cadence of missions from Vandenberg Air Force Base as soon as July to deploy Starlink internet satellites…
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Musk says methane leak doomed latest Starship test flight
File photo of the Starship SN8 prototype, which flew last year, with three Raptor engines. Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday that a “relatively small” methane leak caused the explosion of the company’s latest Starship test rocket last week on an experimental flight over South Texas. The 164-foot-tall (50-meter) Starship test vehicle,…
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Live coverage: SpaceX crew capsule moves to new space station docking port
Live coverage of the relocation of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft to a new docking port outside the International Space Station. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter. Editor’s Note: NASA TV’s live video coverage of the Crew Dragon relocation maneuver begins at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT) Monday.