Portal Space Systems will create a second factory to scale up production of high-performance in-space vehicles as it gears up for initial test flights in 2026.
An experimental reusable rocket developed by the research and development arm of Honda Motor Company flew to an altitude of nearly 900 feet Tuesday, then landed with pinpoint precision at the carmaker's test facility in northern Japan.
The text of a budget reconciliation bill released by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last week calls for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, to begin charging licensing fees to space companies next year. The fees would phase in over eight years, after which the FAA would adjust them to keep pace with inflation. The money would go into a trust fund to help pay for the operating costs of the FAA's commercial space office.
A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 3:56 a.m. Eastern (0756 UTC) June 14 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Launch footage showed insulation tiles falling away from the rocket as it climbed into a clear blue sky above the spaceport, with hypergolic exhaust also visible.
CAS Space conducted the Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2) first stage hot fire test June 11, marking a big step towards the launch of the Qingzhou-1 prototype cargo spacecraft later in the year, the company said in a June 12 statement.
One of his first steps would have been to attempt to accelerate the timeline for the Artemis II mission, which is scheduled to fly four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026. He planned to bring in "strike" teams of engineers to help move Artemis and other programs forward. Isaacman wanted to see the Artemis II vehicle on the pad later this summer, with the goal of launching in December of this year, echoing the historic launch of Apollo 8 in December 1968.
Toulouse-based startup Alpha Impulsion has completed a short test firing of an autophage rocket engine. The company plans to use the novel propulsion system to power its 25-metre Grenat rocket.
Quebec’s government announced an award of $10 million Canadian dollars ($7.3 million) to Canadian rocket startup Reaction Dynamics and software developer Maya HTT.
The company announced June 9 that its DARK propulsion system, incorporated into a D-Orbit ION vehicle launched in March, has carried out a series of test firings in orbit. Arkadia said the system, featuring a thruster producing five newtons of thrust, performed both hundreds of very short pulses firing for tens of milliseconds at a time as well as longer “steady state” burns of up to five seconds.
A year after the launch of a flawed crewed test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, NASA has yet to determine the next mission for the spacecraft with mixed signals about the vehicle’s future.
Ryo Ujiie, ispace's chief technology officer, said the final data received from the Resilience lander—assuming it was correct—showed it at an altitude of approximately 630 feet (192 meters) and descending too fast for a safe landing. "The deceleration was not enough. That was a fact," Ujiie told reporters in a press conference. "We failed to land, and we have to analyze the reasons."
If NASA were to terminate its contracts with SpaceX, it would effectively mean the end of the International Space Station. The problem with this is that SpaceX also holds the contract to safely de-orbit the space station, which is currently due to occur in 2030. With a mass of more than 400 metric tons, the space station will be the largest human-made object ever to return to Earth and could cause substantial damage in populated areas if not safely de-orbited into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
The Tokyo-based company slightly revised the landing time for its Resilience lunar lander in a statement late June 3. The landing, in the Mare Frigoris region of the northern hemisphere of the near side of the moon, is now scheduled for 3:17 p.m. Eastern June 5, seven minutes earlier than previously announced.
Dutch rocket builder T-Minus Engineering has signed an agreement with Canada’s Maritime Launch Services to carry out two rocket launches from Spaceport Nova Scotia in October.
Astroscale has completed the critical design review of a servicer aiming to remove a OneWeb broadband satellite from low Earth orbit (LEO) next year, the Japanese venture’s British subsidiary announced June 4.
Established in mid-2024, Astronstone announced May 29 it had secured more than 100 million yuan ($13.9 million) in part for the development of its AS-1 (Astronstone-1) stainless steel, methane-liquid oxygen reusable launch vehicle, with a “chopsticks” system for first stage recovery.
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