The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded contracts for the first phase of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) programme. New contracts go to Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin to add to one already awarded to General...
On 21 April Virgin Orbit was selected to launch a series of six hyperspectral imaging satellites using its LauncherOne vehicle. The satellites are being developed by a team lead by Hypersat LLC – a geospatial analytics company – and QinetiQ US – the...
Amazon has made its first official contract award for its future LEO satellite internet constellation – known as Project Kuiper. The award, announced on 19 April, was granted to American launch provider United Launch Alliance. ULA has been contracted to provide nine...
Astrobotic has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to fly its first GRIFFIN lunar lander to the Moon. This is the first mission for its larger lander product – its smaller PEREGRINE lander is due to fly this year. The GRIFFIN mission is planned to launch...
Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics subsidiary announced that its Mission Extension Vehicle- 2 ( MEV-2) had successfully docked with the communications Intelsat 10-02 (IS-10-02) in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) in order to extend its life. After some practice...
After a period of speculation concerning a planned Chinese launch, it lifted off at 2301 GMT, 8 April 2021 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The Long March 4B (CZ-4B) rocket carried the Shiyan 6-03 (Shiyan Weixing 6-03) to a high, 1,000 km, Low Earth Orbit...
