Space News

A spacecraft that Lockheed Martin built for NASA’s Mars exploration mission landed Monday on the red planet’s surface. The InSight Mars Lander made its descent on Elysium Planitia in the planet’s equatorial region and transmitted a tone through its X-band small deep space transponder seven minutes after the spacecraft’s landing, Lockheed said Monday. The spacecraft […] More

A new advisory panel of NASA has provided proposals during its first meeting to help advance commercial space activities, SpaceNews reported Wednesday. The NASA Advisory Council’s regulatory and policy committee convened on Nov. 16 in Washington to assess marketing concerns, advertising and export controls related to commercial space initiatives. Mike Gold, vice president for regulation […] More

Boeing and SpaceX have scheduled a series of demonstrations for 2019 to seek NASA’s approval for regular flights of their new spacecraft and rockets to bring astronauts to the International Space Station. The demonstrations indicate both companies have moved closer to final stages of development and evaluation of their new space vehicles, NASA said Wednesday. […] More

A SpaceX-built cargo spacecraft is scheduled to launch early next month at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to deliver scientific experiments, hardware and crew supplies to the International Space Station. The Dragon cargo ship’s targeted Dec. 4 liftoff on a Falcon 9 rocket will mark SpaceX’s  16th Commercial Resupply Services mission under a contract with NASA, the […] More

Jacobs Engineering Group will continue to help NASA operate the space agency’s research facility in Hampton, Va., under a one-year, $46M contract extension. The company said Wednesday it will perform design engineering work at the Langley Research Center and manage projects, construction, assets and configuration tasks for laboratories, test equipment, wind tunnels and specialized instruments. Steve […] More

A Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft for NASA‘s Mars exploration mission is scheduled to make its seven-minute descent on the planet’s surface on Nov. 26, the Denver Business Journal reported Monday. The InSight lander probe is set to begin a 12K mile-per-hour landing on the red planet prior to its 728-day research expedition. The lander’s robotic arm will deploy […] More

A Northrop Grumman spacecraft has reached the International Space Station for its 10th cargo resupply mission with NASA. The company said Monday the Cygnus spacecraft, also called “S.S. John Young,” transported 7.4K pounds of crew supplies and research materials to ISS after it launched Saturday from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia aboard an Antares rocket. ISS crew used the […] More

Northrop Grumman on Saturday launched the Cygnus cargo spacecraft on a mission to deliver 7,400 pounds of NASA‘s scientific equipment and crew supplies to the  International Space Station. The company said Saturday its vehicle, nicknamed S.S. John Young, lifted off at 4:01 a.m. Eastern time from the Wallops Flight Facility’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A  in Virginia aboard the medium-class Antares rocket. […] More

NASA has issued a request for information on potential switch designs for a communication payload network as part of the agency’s Laser Optical Near-Earth Satellite System project. In a FedBizOpps notice posted Friday, the agency encourages both large and small businesses to submit capability statements describing their abilities to address the LOCNESS switch requirement. The […] More

A team of Lockheed Martin engineers has commanded NASA‘s OSIRIS-REx space probe to move a robotic sampling arm designed to collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu. Lockheed said Friday its engineering team tested movements of the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism to determine the TAGSAM device’s readiness for upcoming asteroid surface material collection. OSIRIX-REx, which lifted off in September 2016 aboard an Atlas V […] More

Multinational software company Autodesk has launched a multiyear research project with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explore new ways to design and build a spacecraft for long-duration space travel beyond Mars. The company said Tuesday it is utilizing generative design technology and its Fusion 360 cloud-based platform to help the agency build a new interplanetary […] More