Tag: year in review
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Year in Space: Get ready for moon missions to take center stage in 2026
An artist’s conception shows the Orion spacecraft’s main engine firing during a lunar flyby, surrounded by eight auxiliary engines built by L3Harris’ Aerojet Redmond facility. (NASA Illustration) Lunar missions once felt like the domain of history books rather than current events, but an upcoming trip around the moon is poised to generate headlines at a…
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The Year in Space: Amazon’s Project Kuiper revs up to join the megaconstellation market
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket sends two prototype satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper to orbit in 2023. The first operational Kuiper satellites are due for launch on a different Atlas V in early 2025. (ULA Photo) Get ready for Amazon’s Project Kuiper to pick up the pace in the megaconstellation space race. So…
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A year for gearing up: Aerospace ventures are counting down to big missions in 2024
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifts off with two prototype Amazon satellites on Oct. 6. (ULA Photo) If 2022 was packed with headline-grabbing aerospace developments — including the first pictures from the James Webb Telescope and the first launch of NASA’s giant moon rocket — 2023 was what you might call a rebuilding year.…
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From Artemis to Webb, take a look back — and a look ahead — at the year’s top trends in aerospace
An image of the galaxy NGC 7469 in the midst of star formation serves as this season’s “holiday card” from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA / L. Armus, A.S. Evans) A few years from now, we just might look back at 2022 as Year One for a new age…
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Year in Space: Jeff Bezos and his billionaire rivals finally usher in the age of commercial spaceflight
Jeff Bezos uncorks the bubbly after riding Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship. (Blue Origin Photo) For 25 years, I’ve been recapping the top stories about space and looking forward to next year’s trends on the final frontier — and for most of that time, the dawn of the era of commercial spaceflight has been…
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Year in Aerospace: The comeback begins for Boeing and for American spaceflight
An American Airlines 737 MAX 8 jet takes off on a test flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Tulsa, Okla., on Dec. 2. (American Airlines Photo) Boeing’s rebuilding year drew to a close today with a milestone capping a momentous year in aerospace: the first U.S. passenger flight for a 737 MAX jet since the worldwide…
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Year in Aerospace: Looking back at Boeing’s troubles, looking ahead to commercial triumphs
The first 737 MAX 8 plane undergoes final assembly at Boeing’s Renton plant in 2015. (Boeing Photo) 2019 was a tough year for the aerospace industry — a year when a control system flaw caused the second catastrophic crash of a 737 MAX jet and sparked a worldwide grounding of Boeing’s fastest-selling plane. Nine months…
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ULA year in review
CAPE CANAVERAL — A record number of Atlas 5 launches, the return of Delta 2 and a Delta 4-Heavy at the dawn of a new space exploration era highlighted 2014 for United Launch Alliance. The company performed 14 missions this year from Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California using nine…