Some years ago this column started its annual analysis called “The Great Space Race”. The idea was that while the original “Moon race” ended in 1969 when the USA beat the Soviet Union onto the lunar surface with its Apollo 11 human landing, a new one has...
Blue Origin CEO and recent addition to the ranks of ‘astronaut’, Jeff Bezos, has offered to restore competition to NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) programme in an open letter to the NASA Administrator. In return for an HLS contract, Bezos has offered to cover the...
While NASA’s US$4.25 billion Europa Clipper unmanned exploration flyby mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa was always mooted as going on the NASA Heavy lift launch vehicle (HLV) SLS, and, in fact, was at one stage Congressionally obliged to do so, in the end...
ESA decided the winner of its fifth “Medium-class” Cosmic Vision competition on 10 June. Out of the two finalists the Venus-oriented “EnVision” orbiter won out over the gamma-ray burst studying “THESEUS”. The initial call for...
NASA selected two new missions to form part of its Discovery programme on 2 June. These missions lie on the smaller end of the scale for NASA, but will still be funded to the tune of US$500 million each. The winning candidates have been in competition since 2019 when...
On 19 May Firefly Aerospace contracted SpaceX to launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander mission, planned for 2023. SpaceX will utilise its Falcon 9 launch vehicle for the mission. Firefly is developing the Blue Ghost lander as part of the NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar...
