Government/Military

NASA has awarded five companies contracts to mature sustainable lunar landing concepts as part of its Artemis program, the agency announced Tuesday.  Dynetics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, and SpaceX received firm fixed-price, milestone-based contracts that are worth a combined $146 million. This awards fall under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2)....

Virgin Galactic has delayed its next test flight “Unity 23” with the Italian Air Force until mid-October due to a component issue.  In a statement issued Monday, Virgin Galactic said a third-party supplier notified the company of a potential manufacturing defect in a component of the flight control actuation system. Virgin Galactic does not yet...

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $152.5 million contract to launch the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U) mission. The total cost includes the launch service and other mission-related costs. The GOES-U mission is targeted to launch in April 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  GOES-U is the fourth and final...

The push to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in military satellite systems in the coming years will require greater use of commercial advancements in data management and intelligent routing solutions, a panel of experts said Thursday. Dr. Santanu Das, the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) program manager for Communications and Networking, told...

The National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) has awarded Spire Global a six-month contract for commercial weather data. Spire announced Tuesday that this order represents the largest volume of commercial weather data purchased to date by NOAA under the Commercial Weather Data Buy Program. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.  Spire will provide...

The Israel Space Agency awarded a contract to space computing systems company Ramon.Space to provide a space computing payload for a mission scheduled to launch in early 2022. Under the terms of the contract announced on Tuesday, Ramon.Space will provide the agency with a digital payload that can perform computing on-orbit including software updates and...

Intelsat has certified ThinKom Solutions‘ land-mobile ThinSat 300 phased-array antenna for use on the operator’s FlexMove government satellite network. ThinKom completed a series of over-the-air tests at Intelsat’s Mountainside Teleport in Maryland with Intelsat General. As a result, the operator fully authorized ThinSat 300 for use with Intelsat’s FlexMove — a tiered-service offering built around...

NASA has selected Ball Aerospace for two studies that will look at instrument architectures and designs for the next generation of Landsat. The Landsat program is a joint program between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The studies are part of the Landsat ext architecture series and will explore constellation satellite concept and single...

Amazon is taking issue with SpaceX’s plans for the second generation of its Starlink internet constellation. SpaceX has recently proposed two possible configurations for the second generation of its Starlink constellation. Each would add about 30,000 satellites to the constellation, to be deployed by the Starship rocket in development.  Representatives from Amazon recently met with...

In the last three months, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC), previously known as Space and Missile Systems Center, has declared three Lockheed Martin GPS III satellites “available for launch (AFL),” SSC said on Aug. 26. The three birds – GPS III SV06, SV07, and SV08 – are awaiting callup at Lockheed Martin’s GPS III...