Launch

Vestaspace Technology, an Indian small satellite manufacturing company, released plans on Tuesday to launch a constellation of 35 or more satellites across India with the intention of building 5G speed network connections and Internet of Things (IoT) functionalities. The company says it will release a beta version of the next-generation satellite constellations in September, in...

Virgin Orbit ended the launch demonstration of its small satellite air-launched LauncherOne rocket early on Monday, when an anomaly occurred early in the first stage of the rocket’s flight. Much of the test went according to plan. Virgin Orbit said it successfully completed pre-launch procedures, the captive carry flight out to the drop site,telemetry lock...

Skyrora recently completed a full static fire test of a mobile launch complex with a Skylark L rocket — a milestone that the U.K. smallsat launch company said shows the vehicle is ready for launch. Skyrora said its team also built the mobile launch complex for the test in five days, and the combined achievement signifies...

Commercial satellite operators are experiencing significant changes that are part of a shift from a legacy Geostationary (GEO) communications satellite broadcasting business to more data-centric use cases. The commercial GEO communications satellite industry declined sharply in 2017 with a record low of only seven satellite orders. The previous industry low was seven units 15 years...

SpaceX’s Senior Vice President of Production and Launch, Zachary Dunn, is moving to Relativity Space as the company’s vice president of Factory Development, Relativity announced Monday. Eric Berger of Ars Technica first broke the news. Dunn will lead Relativity’s newly created Factory Development team. Relativity said the team’s initial focus is to deliver its 3D...

The U.S. Space Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a $2.3 billion contract for early hardware procurement to build two satellites for missile warning in polar orbits under the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) program. The satellites included in the May 18 contract award will help fill out the Next-Gen OPIR Block 0 architecture, for which...

United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched the Atlas V 501 from Space Launch Complex-41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Sunday, at 9:14 a.m. EDT, carrying the USSF-7 mission for the U.S. Space Force. The launch was delayed one day due to bad weather. It marked the sixth flight of the X-37B Orbital...

Firefly Aerospace, Inc. announced May 6 that it has secured AS9100 quality certification — a key quality milestone as the company transitions from the developmental phase to the first launch of its Firefly Alpha rocket. Firefly has passed all quality audit requirements to receive the AS9100 certification, which is a standardized benchmark prepared by the International...

On Friday May 1, Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company completed the first SpaceShipTwo test flight from Spaceport America in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This was the first time the spaceship flew freely in New Mexico, a key milestone in its flight test program in preparation for commercial spaceflight service since its headquarters was relocated to...

Gwynne Shotwell’s heart is in her throat. With one gesture, SpaceX’s President and COO Gwynne Shotwell gave a glimpse into her perspective ahead of the historic NASA and SpaceX Demo-2 test mission coming up on May 27, in which a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket and travel to the...