NASA has been showing of a new concept design for a manned Mars rover at the Kennedy Space Centre’s Visitor Centre. The six-wheeled solar powered design comes from the vehicle design studio of Parker Brothers Concepts. The firm is more used to making...
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Boeing to build its new part-reusable experimental spaceplane (XS-1). Called the Phantom Express, it will act as a first stage carrying an expendable upper stage on top that is designed to deliver...
The Blue Origin programme to develop the new BE-4 Methane/Liquid Oxygen burning rocket engine for the reusable first stage of its proposed New Glenn vehicle range had a major set back on 13 May when a key test of its major components ended in explosive failure. The...
The credibility of NASA’s uber-expensive heavy-lift rocket programme, SLS, is in jeopardy. This follows NASA’s admission that its first flight would be delayed for financial reasons and because of the damage inflicted on one of it tanks after it was dropped....
The Chinasat 16 experimental communications satellite (aka Shi Jian 13) was aboard a CALT operated Long March 3B-G2 (CZ 3B-G2) which lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in southwest China, at 1104 GMT on 12 April 2017. The satellite is based on the...
While SpaceX concentrates on making its partly reusable rocket even more low cost, by dint of recovering the payload fairing using control thrusters and parachutes, it has even grander ambitions. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has apparently decided to resuscitate his plan...
