An Electron rocket built by Rocket Lab suffered a failure during a launch that took place at 1111 GMT on 15 May from Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand. The anomaly occurred post ignition of the second-stage. Seconds after ignition, the single Rutherford engine shut down...
On 12 May Virgin Orbit announced that it had been selected by Arqit Limited to launch its first two satellites. The contract covers two launches starting in 2023. Arqit Limited is a British, newspace company which has recently exited “stealth mode” and...
Following four failed attempts to land previous versions of the Starship launch vehicle, SpaceX finally succeeded in landing its latest prototype, SN15, on 5 May after a six-minute test flight. As the dust cleared from the landing pad at the Boca Chica facility in...
Two of the three upcoming German small launcher developers: Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), have been the recipients of launch contracts (or bookings) in recent weeks. Both of these start-ups are developing new small launch vehicles, Spectrum (Isar)...
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded contracts for the first phase of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) programme. New contracts go to Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin to add to one already awarded to General...
On 21 April Virgin Orbit was selected to launch a series of six hyperspectral imaging satellites using its LauncherOne vehicle. The satellites are being developed by a team lead by Hypersat LLC – a geospatial analytics company – and QinetiQ US – the...
