Space

SpaceX will conduct the sixth flight test of Starship, the largest rocket ever built, as soon as November 18, following the smooth success of the previous mission less than a month ago.  The high flight cadence is thanks, in part, to that success, which included the first-ever return of the Super

SpaceX will attempt to transfer propellant from one orbiting Starship to another as early as next March, a technical milestone that will pave the way for an uncrewed landing demonstration of a Starship on the moon, a NASA official said this week.  Much has been made of Starship's potentia

Space executives took the stage at technewss Disrupt on Monday to talk about the challenges and opportunities of building out dual-use technology, or tech that has both a defense and a commercial use case.  The dual-use strategy can be tricky for young startups to manage, however, because they r

Blue Origin has carried out a successful uncrewed certification mission of its second New Shepard ship on Wednesday, as the company looks to effectively double the number of tourists it can fly to suborbital space and back. The RSS Kármán Line capsule is named for the imaginary boundary at 100 k

Don't count out Astra Space just yet. The company, which was taken private again earlier this year for a sliver of its former value, has landed a new contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to support the development of a next-gen launch system for time-sensitive space missions.  The

Lumen Orbit has closed an oversubscribed, eight-figure seed round of more than $10 million, a source familiar with the details told technewss. That would make it one of the hottest deals, if not the hottest deal, of the most recent Y Combinator batch. The Redmond, Washington-based startup is purs

The Space Development Agency (SDA) has selected 19 companies to compete for future contracts under a new program designed to rapidly onboard new contractors for defense demonstration missions. Each company will receive an initial $20,000 to cover administrative expenses.  These companies have es

SpaceX was awarded an eight-launch, $733 million contract by the U.S. Space Force on Friday, as part of an ongoing program intended to foster competition among launch providers. The award includes seven launches for the Space Development Agency and one for the National Reconnaissance Office, all

Canadian remote sensing startup Wyvern is expanding south of the border.  The Alberta-based company, which collects what it says is the highest-resolution hyperspectral imagery on the market, has raised $6 million to, among other things, expand into U.S. commercial and defense markets. 

SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against a California agency this week after the body rejected a proposal to increase the company’s launches from the state's coastline to 50 per year.  The California Coastal Commission (CCC) made its decision at an October 10 meeting, despite the U.S. Air

For the first time, SpaceX not only launched its mammoth Starship, but also returned the booster to the launch site and caught it with a pair of oversized “chopsticks.” This test flight — the fifth in the Starship development program — took place Sunday morning at the company'

It's been the stuff of science fiction for decades: to provide gigawatts of cheap, clean power anywhere on Earth, day or night, using satellites that collect and transmit solar energy directly on orbit. Aetherflux, a new startup emerging from stealth Wednesday, says it is developing a novel des

There are many hypotheses about what capabilities will need to come online for the growing space industry to flourish, but two of the biggest concern in-space mobility and in-space refueling. To have a fully independent space economy, proponents argue, we'll need to be able to move satellites a

Anduril is expanding even further into the “ultimate high ground.”  The company, which is best known for AI-powered defense products that span air, land and sea, is partnering with satellite bus manufacturing startup Apex to rapidly deploy payloads on orbit for the U.S. Department