FAA grounds Virgin Galactic amidst investigation into July mission

Remember that story we posted earlier today about Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight scheduled to launch in September? We may have spoken too soon. This afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was grounding all Virgin Galactic flights until further notice, pending the results of the investigation into the company’s July 11 crewed flight. “Virgin […]

Rocket Lab boosts its space systems divison in quest to become an “end-to-end space company”

Peter Beck hasn’t been shy about his intention to grow Rocket Lab into more than just a launch provider, but a fully vertically integrated space company that makes spacecraft in addition to sending them to orbit. The company, which he founded in 2006, has taken yet another major stride toward that goal with the news […]

Pandemic-driven liquid oxygen shortage threatens ULA, SpaceX launches

The ongoing reverberations from the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing to make themselves felt in the most unlikely of places: spaceflight. On Friday, NASA took the unexpected step to ground a September satellite launch due to pandemic-related shortages of liquid oxygen (LOX), and there may be more launch delays yet to come. Demand for oxygen has […]

Peter Beck on Rocket Lab’s public listing debut, space SPACs and the Neutron rocket

Peter Beck’s earliest memory is standing outside with his father in his hometown of Invercargill, New Zealand, looking up at the stars and being told that there could very well be people on planets orbiting those stars looking right back at him. “For a three or four year old, that was a mind-blowing thing that […]

Astroscale successfully demos in-space capture-and-release system to clear orbital debris

Astroscale hit a major milestone Wednesday, when its space junk removal demo satellite that’s currently in orbit successfully captured and released a client spacecraft using a magnetic system. The End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission was launched in March, with the goal of validating the company’s orbital debris removal tech. The demonstrator package, which was […]

Ispace unveils bigger moon lander capable of surviving lunar nights

Ispace, a Japanese space startup that aims to lead the development of a lunar economy, has unveiled its design for a large lander that could go to the moon as early as 2024. Tokyo-based ispace said this next-gen lander, dubbed Series 2, would be used on the company’s third planned moon mission. The lander is […]

HyPoint and Piasecki reach $6.5M deal to develop hydrogen fuel cells systems for eVTOLs

A quick survey of many of the most highly valued electric vertical take-off and landing companies shows one thing in common: All of them are developing aircraft powered by batteries. But a growing suite of aviation companies, turned off by what they see as the energy density limitations of lithium-ion batteries, are turning instead to […]

SpaceX ships 100,000 Starlink terminals to customers, eyes future launches using Starship

Elon Musk’s Starlink project, which aims to provide global broadband connectivity via a constellation of satellites, has shipped 100,000 terminals to customers. 100k terminals shipped!https://t.co/Q1VvqVmJ2i — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2021 It’s a jaw-dropping pace for the capital-intensive service, which began satellite launches in November 2019 and opened its $99/month beta program for select […]