Seth Seifman, an analyst with J.P. Morgan, has said he predicts sales of hypersonic missiles to go beyond $5B by the middle of 2020s as the Defense Department prioritizes the development of the weapons technology, CNBC reported Wednesday. He cited several defense companies that may pursue hypersonic contracts such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, […] More

Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory has received approval from NASA to transition to the final assembly and design phase a spacecraft for an asteroid deflection mission. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft aims to shift the orbit of an asteroid in the Didymos binary asteroid system to demonstrate the capability of the kinetic impact […] More

Some aerospace and defense contractors have initiated efforts to build new communications satellites and hypersonic missiles to leverage the rising military spending on space projects to counter threats posed by Russia and China to U.S. space assets, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Those companies also intend to capitalize on the White House’s plan to […] More

A spacecraft that Lockheed Martin built for NASA captured the first images of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Aug. 17 from a 1.4M mile-distance nearly two years after the space vehicle launched aboard United Launch Vehicle’s Atlas V rocket. NASA said Saturday it expects the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer spacecraft to arrive at […] More

The U.S. Air Force could award a new set of Launch Service Agreements sometime during August, one month later than scheduled, SpaceNews reported Wednesday. The military service aims to select two domestic commercial launch service providers that can cover national security missions and send heavy and complex payloads to space. Northrop Grumman‘s innovation systems sector — then called Orbital […] More

Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, has told a Senate subcommittee that planned exploration missions to Mars demand a “space industrial base of enormous breadth and depth.” Bruno said in a testimony published Wednesday that ULA has formed strategic partnerships with Aerojet Rocketdyne, L3 Technologies, Spincraft and other companies to supply key components for […] More

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has concluded its two-week evaluation of an RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine variant as part of the agency’s Experimental Spaceplane program with Boeing. DARPA said Tuesday it coordinated with Aerojet Rocketdyne in fire testing the AR-22 engine using an aircraft-like approach. Experimental Spaceplane Program Manager Scott Wierzbanowski said the […] More

Orbital ATK has introduced a new rocket the company built for the U.S. Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program at the 34th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The OmegA rocket is Orbital ATK’s Next Generation Launch System that is set for ground tests in 2019 and initial launch in 2021, the company said Monday. […] More

Jim Centore, group lead for orbital mission operations at Blue Origin, has said the company started to run tests on its BE-4 rocket engine in October 2017 at its facility in West Texas and will continue the testing phase over the next several months, SpaceNews reported Saturday. “We’re getting longer duration burn times. We’re going […] More

Boeing and Northrop Grumman have started to develop designs of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile for the U.S. Air Force, SpaceNews reported Tuesday. The service branch awarded in August 2017 approximately $678 million in combined contracts to Boeing and Northrop to perform technology maturation and risk reduction work on the GBSD program. GBSD […] More

NASA has performed a certification test on a flight controller for a future Space Launch System deep space rocket as part of a series of tests on components built using advanced manufacturing approaches. The space agency said Wednesday the flight controller was integrated on the RS-25 developmental engine for a 365-second full-duration test held at the […] More

A National Reconnaissance Office payload lifted off Friday at 2:11 p.m. Pacific time aboard a United Launch Alliance-built Delta IV rocket as part of the NROL-47 national defense mission. Will Crawford, NRO program manager at ULA, said in a statement published Friday the payload’s launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California marks the Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture’s 27th NRO mission in partnership with the […] More