Category Archives: Space Today

Maxar Technologies recently announced a $142 million NASA contract to demonstrate in-space assembly using a robotic arm. Maxar said the contract will take its Dragonfly robotics program, which started in 2015 as a DARPA study, and pair it with Restore-L, a refueling spacecraft the company is building for NASA. Dragonfly has now been renamed theRead More

Astronomers seeking to learn about the mechanisms that formed massive black holes in the early history of the Universe have gained important new clues with the discovery of 13 such black holes in dwarf galaxies less than a billion light-years from Earth. These dwarf galaxies, more than 100 times less massive than our own MilkyRead More

SpaceX’s newly redesigned prototype of its Mars-colonizing Starship craft could get off the ground for the first time just two or three months from now, company founder and CEO Elon Musk said. SpaceX initiated that redesign after the first full-size Starship prototype, called the Mk1, blew its top during a pressurization test in November ofRead More

NASA, with the assistance of an amateur image analyst, has identified the crash site of India’s Vikram lunar lander, the agency announced recently. NASA released images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) showing the impact site and resulting debris field from Vikram, which attempted to make a soft landing in the south polar regionsRead More

UAE is already working on plans for its next space mission, it was announced during the first press conference of Emirati astronaut Hazzaa Al Mansoori after his historic maiden space flight in September. The recent press conference at Dubai Press Club was also addressed by Salem Al Merri, head of the UAE Astronaut Program, andRead More

York Space Systems announced their plans to expand production facilities for its S-Class satellites. The Denver-based company that currently produces ten to 12 satellites per year will be able to produce 50 satellites in 2020 and hundreds of satellites annually in the future, York Executive Chairman Chuck Beames told SpaceNews. York’s first satellite, sent intoRead More

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai recently, met with the UAE’s astronauts, HazzaaAlMansoori – the first Emirati to reach space – and reserve astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi. In the meeting held on the sidelines of a Cabinet session, Sheikh Mohammed praised AlMansoori’sRead More

Avio, has officially partnered with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) to make space more accessible. At the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), UNOOSA welcomed Avio alongside representatives from Virgin Galactic, Maxar, NASA, the National Space Council, Italy and Zambia. The meeting, a side event at the UNGA, focusedRead More

China is developing a next-generation spacecraft for human spaceflight that would allow astronauts to travel to the moon and other deep-space destinations. China became the third country to independently launch astronauts in 2003 when Yang Liwei orbited Earth in the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft. And while the country plans to soon begin constructing a modular space station,Read More