Space

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from technewss all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. Another public launch company is coming soon, while a still-private launch had to push off their planned first flight date. Still another launcher got the go-ahead for its big d

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 pac

Rocket Lab is one step closer to going to Mars with NASA’s approval of the company’s Photon spacecraft for an upcoming science mission. If all continues according to plan the two craft will launch in 2024 and arrive on the red planet 11 months later to study its magnetosphere. The missi

Australian regulators have given Taiwan Innovative Space, a five-year-old launch company that goes by Tispace, the green light to conduct a commercial launch at a newly licensed facility in southern Australia later this year. Tispace will conduct a test flight of its two-stage, suborbital rocket Ha

Virgin Orbit is set to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisitions company (SPAC), the company has confirmed. The deal values the combined enterprise at $3.2 billion, and will provide Virgin Orbit with $483 million in cash at close, including a $100 million PIPE. The combined company

3D rocket printing company Relativity Space has pushed back the date of the demonstration launch of its lightweight Terran 1 rocket from winter 2021 to early 2022. The company announced the updated schedule on Twitter, while also confirming that the launch will take place out of Cape Canaveral in F

Rocket launch startup Astra has received a key license from the Federal Aviation Administration, giving the green light for the company's first commercial orbital launch at the end of the month. Astra CEO Chris Kemp tweeted the news on Thursday, adding that the launch operator license through t

Satellite operator Planet Labs is beefing up its existing partnership with Google Cloud. Under a new agreement, Planet customers can use Google Cloud to store and process data, and access Google's other products such as its data analytics warehouse BigQuery. The two companies' collaboration

Aurora Propulsion Technologies, a Finnish company that develops thrusters and de-orbiting modules for small satellites, will be sending its technology to space for the first time. The company has signed on with Rocket Lab to send its inaugural AuroraSat-1 CubeSat into low Earth orbit aboard an Elec

Blue Origin, the space company helmed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is taking NASA to court. The company filed a complaint with a federal claims court on Monday over the agency's decision to award a lunar lander contract solely to rival company SpaceX. The complaint, which Blue Origin successfully

Blue Origin and Dynetics are still steaming over NASA’s decision to award only one contract — to SpaceX — to build a Human Landing System for the Artemis program. Their protest of the decision was recently rejected, and now the Government Accountability Office’s arguments, which Blu

SpaceX has achieved another major milestone in its Starship fully reusable launch system: It stacked the Starship spacecraft itself on top of a prototype of its Super Heavy booster, which itself is loaded up with a full complement of 29 Raptor rocket engines, and the Starship on top has six itself

Walter Isaacson, the biographer who chronicled the lives of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, is turning his attention to the life and career of Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO announced the project in a tweet Wednesday. If you're curious about Tesla, SpaceX & my general goings

Astra’s last test launch went better than expected, nearly achieving orbit — kind of a stretch goal for that specific mission. The company at the time said that it would only need to tweak software to reach an orbital destination, and now we know when it’s going to get the chance to p