Launch

NASA has announced that Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX will design and develop human landing systems for the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the surface of moon by 2024.  Blue Origin is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) – a three-stage lander which will be launched on its New Glenn Rocket System...

Guatemala’s first satellite, a cubesat known as Quetzal-1, was deployed by Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) from the ISS on Tuesday. The mission’s primary objective is to test a multispectral sensor to acquire remote sensing data for natural resource management. The sensor could be used to monitor water quality in inland water bodies, helping to...

Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary, designed, manufactured, assembled, and integrated the U.S. Space Force TETRA-1 satellite in 15 months, which the company said is 60% faster than previous missions. TETRA-1 is a microsatellite created for various prototype missions in and around Geostationary Orbit (GEO). It was the first prototype award under the U.S. Space...

Firefly Aerospace, a provider of launch vehicles, spacecraft, and in-space services, and Spaceflight, a launch services and mission management provider, have signed a Launch Services Agreement (LSA). The agreement confirms that Spaceflight will secure the majority of the payload mass aboard a Firefly Alpha launch, scheduled for lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in...

Momentus has reached a launch service agreement with Swarm Technologies, marking its first constellation customer, the company announced on Wednesday. Momentus is a provider of in-space transportation services for satellites, and Swarm is planning to launch more than 150 small satellites over the next few years to offer worldwide connectivity.  The agreement includes a first...

SpaceX launched an additional 60 Starlink satellites on Wednesday, marking more than 420 satellites launched for the company’s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. A Falcon 9 booster launched the satellites at 3:31 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The first stage booster landed successfully on the...

The Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) has recently delivered an engineering test unit of the Short-Wave Infrared Detection Assembly, to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. This is a major subcomponent on NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem spacecraft (PACE).  PACE, which is scheduled to launch in late 2022, is designed to extend and improve NASA’s satellite...

Airbus Defence and Space will develop and manufacture the thermal infrared instrument for the TRISHNA climate monitoring satellite for the French Space Agency (CNES), the organizations announced Monday.  TRISHNA, (Thermal Infrared Imaging Satellite for High Resolution Natural Resource Assessment), will be the latest satellite in a joint Franco-Indian satellite fleet dedicated to climate monitoring and...

Maxar completed a critical milestone for its Psyche spacecraft, which Maxar is building to launch in 2022 to explore a metallic asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The milestone, called the solar electric propulsion chassis Critical Design Review (CDR), marks the end of the spacecraft engineering phase and the start of the manufacturing...

AAC Clyde Space has won an additional $250,000 order from Loft Orbital for power systems for two satellites. The systems will be delivered during 2020, starting with an engineering model in the current quarter to be followed by flight models for two satellites in the latter half of 2020, AAC Clyde Space said in an...