Civil
Stories about US and international civil space missions, including those led by NASA and ESA.
Texas Plans Historic Investment in Space
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is requesting a staggering $350M from state legislators to form a Texas Space Commission, as first reported by Ars Technica. While details on specific allocations have yet to be determined, the overall goal of the funding will be to further establish Texas as a space hub. “With companies seeking to expand…
NASA Enters the Metaverse
Last week, NASA released a new crowdsourcing competition to build out a virtual reality (VR) Mars simulator. The agency would be able to use the simulator to prepare astronauts for the various scenarios they may encounter on a mission to the Red Planet. The competition: Participants are given access to a pre-constructed digital world that…
The State of US Spaceports
Last week, Georgia’s Supreme Court upheld a referendum in which residents voted to block Camden county from building a spaceport. The legal challenge by Camden County Commissioners, who sought to have the referendum declared invalid, was rejected unanimously. The backstory: Spaceport Camden has been a contentious issue in the county for over a decade, with…
FCC Approves Kuiper Debris Mitigation Plan
Another megaconstellation has cleared a key step toward LEO deployment. On Wednesday, the FCC approved Kuiper’s orbital debris mitigation plan, a significant regulatory hurdle that has been keeping Amazon’s broadband constellation out of the sky. The story so far: Amazon has taken a long, winding road with Kuiper. In 2020, the FCC approved the constellation,…
Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to Receive Congressional Space Medal of Honor
Later today, two trailblazing American astronauts will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at the White House. The details: Vice President Kamala Harris will award former NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken the medal at 4:15pm ET today. The medal was last awarded to Robert Crippen, the pilot of the first space shuttle…
Aerospace & Defense Primes Report Q4, Full-Year 2022 Earnings
The aerospace & defense (A&D) primes started reporting fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, with Raytheon ($RTX) teeing off first, followed by Lockheed Martin ($LMT), Boeing ($BA), General Dynamics ($GD), and Northrop Grumman ($NOC) this morning. Across the board, companies’ results and forward-looking projections were on the one hand buoyed by sky-high American and allied defense budgets.…
NASA and DARPA Partner on Nuclear Thermal Propulsion
After a 50-year hiatus, the US is planning to test a nuclear fission-powered thermal propulsion system on a spacecraft. NASA said this week that it would team up with DARPA, the Pentagon’s R&D arm, to build, launch, and demonstrate a nuclear thermal engine. This early work is intended to pave the way for a crewed…
Canada Looks to Allow Space Launches
Canada is opening the doors to commercial launch. On Friday, Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced that within the next three years, the country will set up the regulatory framework and licensing processes necessary to greenlight domestic launches. “For many years, Canadian satellites have launched from sites in other countries,” Alghabra said. “It’s time for…
DoD Releases Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Report
Through 60 Minutes, Congress, and incremental declassification, American citizens have been treated to a closer look into what the US government’s “aliens(???)” desktop folder looks like. Driving the news: The intelligence community’s (IC) quest to understand elusive UFO-esque unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings has borne fruit. Those fruits, though, don’t offer any conclusive evidence of…
Exclusive: Euroconsult Values 2022 Space Economy at $464B
In its flagship Space Economy Report published this morning, Paris-based Euroconsult finds that the space market grew 8% in 2022. This report is the gold standard for market intelligence on the end-to-end space economy, from upstream manufacturers to downstream service providers and end users across civil, military, and commercial space. The space value chain… …as…
Space Agency Leaders Recap 2022
The world was busy in space this year. All together, there have been 174 successful orbital launches so far in 2022, and the world’s space agencies have pulled together over the course of the year to make major strides in science, technology, and exploration. Read on for our recap of the top events from space…
Q4 2022 News Roundup
Can you believe 2022 is nearly over? It’s been a jam-packed year for the space industry, full of groundbreaking moments in science, turbulence in the markets and world order; substantive policy developments; and historic mission firsts. We’re kicking off our year-end coverage by looking at objects closest in the rear-view mirror. Payload combed through the…
Roscosmos and NASA Investigate ISS Leak
Last week, a pair of cosmonauts aboard the ISS were all suited up for a spacewalk, ready to step out of the decompressed airlock, when flight controllers noticed that the Soyuz M-22 capsule docked with the station had sprung a leak. Over the past week, NASA and Roscosmos have been investigating the leak, which spilled…
