Lifting-off at 1302 GMT on 20 January, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral carrying 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). The mission lasted for one hour five minutes until the satellites were deployed en masse. This marks the first...
For very different reasons, two major space agencies confirmed in January that they were losing their leaders with another declaring that its departing leader was about to leave early. First up was the departure of Jim Bridenstine, current Administrator of NASA....
On 4 January American aerospace/defence manufacturer Lockheed Martin received a US$4.9 billion contract from the US Space Force. This follows on from an initial US$2.9 billion “development” contract received in 2018. The first was to begin work on the Next-Gen OPIR...
After several technical delays and a maiden launch failure (and at a developmental cost of around US$1 billion), Virgin Orbit finally achieved the first successful flight of its air-launched LauncherOne vehicle. The procedure began with the Boeing 747-400 “Cosmic...
On 13 January SpaceX was selected by MethaneSAT LLC (part of the Environmental Defense Fund) to launch its MethaneSAT mission in late-2022. The satellite will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket and will likely be joined by other payloads considering its less than hefty mass...
SpaceX launched the Turksat 5A geostationary communications satellite at 0215 GMT on 8 January from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission utilised a Falcon 9 rocket which deployed the 3,500 kg payload into a super-synchronous GTO (Geostationary Transfer Orbit) of...
