Space

The US Defense Department’s ambitions beyond Earth just grew a little clearer. SpaceNews has learned the department recently put out a call for privately-made nuclear propulsion systems that could power small- and mid-sized spacecraft. The DoD wants to launch missions venturing beyond Earth o

It was a busy first half of the year for U.S.-New Zealand company Rocket Lab, which posted earnings for the first six months of 2021 on Wednesday — the first such reporting since the company went public last month. Rocket Lab reported revenues of $29.5 million for the six-month period. Its or

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (popularizing the modern internet). He didn't protect the technology because he wanted it to benefit us all. Three decades later, most of the power — and a lot of the profits — of the internet are in the hands of a few tech billio

San Francisco-based startup Orbit Fab wants to be the go-to source for orbital refueling, and now it has raised over $10 million in its quest to get there. The money will go toward funding a refueling trial that's due to launch as early as the end of 2022, in which the company plans to send to

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 resu

Just two months after celebrating its first manned launch to orbit — which is now under investigation with the Federal Aviation Administration — Virgin Galactic wants to return to space. The company will be conducting its first commercial mission, the 23rd for the VSS Unity rocket-power

""> The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into an anomaly on the Virgin Galactic flight that carried Richard Branson to space. In a piece discussing not just that particular flight but the company’s various safety issues throughout the years, The New Yorker explained that Virgin’

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 t

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 l

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from technewss all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. We had a few launches this week, including SpaceX’s first one after one of its longer recent pauses in activity. Astra hoped to have its first commercial payload mission g

Astra, now a public company, ran into a problem during its first commercial launch (the mission carried a test payload contracted by the U.S. Space Force as part of its Space Test Program) that meant the rocket never made it to orbit. On Saturday, the rocket ignited all its engines at liftoff time

Update: After a few holds, Blue Origin successfully launched the New Shepard rocket at around 10:30 AM ET / 7:30 AM PT, with a landing of the first stage at around 10:38 and the capsule at 10:40. Blue Origin’s last launch was its landmark first human flight, carrying Jeff Bez

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-

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.