Virgin Galactic’s second suborbital spaceplane won’t enter service in 2023 as previously planned because of demands on company personnel to both return the first spaceplane to flight and begin work on a next generation of vehicles. In a Nov. 3 earnings call, Michael Colglazier, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said the company was “prioritizing ourRead More

Northrop Grumman selected Leidos to supply infrared sensor payloads for the U.S. Space Development Agency’s missile-tracking satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. “It’s a key win for our space business,” Leidos chairman and CEO Roger Krone said during a third-quarter earnings call. Northrop Grumman won a $617 million contract in July to produce 14 infrared-sensingRead More

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency selected Spire Global to design a small satellite for an experiment to study high-frequency radio signals in the upper layers of the atmosphere, the company announced recently in November. The value of the contract was not disclosed. Spire will design a cubesat to carry a sensor in a veryRead More

The Defense Innovation Unit in November announced new agreements with Amazon Web Services, Kuiper Government Solutions, Microsoft Azure Space and SpiderOak Mission Systems for a project to demonstrate space-based communications using interconnected commercial and government networks. DIU’s goal is to demonstrate a hybrid space architecture using commercial communication systems as transport pipes to move dataRead More

Gen. B. Chance Saltzman assumed command of the US Space Force, and departing chief Gen. John “Jay” Raymond retired in November at a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews Maryland, presided by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. In attendance were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and otherRead More

NASA’s astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann has become the first Native American woman to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft this year. This is Mann’s first spaceflight since becoming an astronaut in 2013. She is the spacecraft commander responsible for all phases of flight, from launch to re-entry. Having earnedRead More

Allison Bennett recalls rising above the lakes and forests of northeastern Ontario, Canada in July 2018 and seeing dozens of lightning-sparked wildfires on the horizon. She was looking at a busy workday as a De Havilland Canada CL-415 water bomber pilot. One wildfire was particularly urgent. Fuelled by dry conditions and high winds, the blazeRead More

More than eight in 10 passengers (83%) feel confident flying again, a significant rise from just one in ten (10%) this time last year, according to Inmarsat’s 2022 Passenger Experience Survey. Saudi Arabia topped the charts with 90% of passengers being the most confident, the UK was close to average (81%), and South Korea (53%)Read More