Ingenuity – part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission – made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet at 0730 GMT on 19 April. The 2 kg solar-powered drone helicopter, which had been deployed on the Martian surface by the Mars rover Perseverence, managed to...
As Elon Musk had hinted on his Twitter feed, NASA formally announced on 26 April that it had selected SpaceX to provide a Human Landing System (HLS) for its Artemis Programme. The US$2.89 billion contract covers the development of the lander and a demonstration...
Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics subsidiary announced that its Mission Extension Vehicle- 2 ( MEV-2) had successfully docked with the communications Intelsat 10-02 (IS-10-02) in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) in order to extend its life. After some practice...
Nascent Scotland-based small launch providers Orbex and Skyrora,have received £8.5 million IN funding under the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Boost! initiative to develop their launch technologies and help bring their rockets to operational status. Orbex, an orbital...
NASA’s much delayed and very expensive SLS heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLV) has coming under renewed criticism as SpaceX’s partly reusable commercial HLV has advanced into its stage testing programme (the main super-booster stage is nearly constructed while the...
Relativity Space, an American company developing “3-D printed” rockets, has been given a contract by the US military to launch an STP (Space Test Program) payload in 2023. Its upcoming rocket, named Terran-1, is expected to conduct its maiden flight later...
