Commercial

The first commercial spacewalk mission looks to be back on schedule with Polaris Dawn saying that it will launch no earlier than July 31, 2024. The Dragon spacecraft is slated to carry the four-person crew farther from Earth than any mission in over 50 years.

Polaris has announced the addition of another XD – or extreme duty – UTV to its lineup, this time an electric multitasker "engineered from the inside out to withstand tough jobsite duty cycles and enable all-day operation with zero exhaust."

Shift Robotics aimed to get folks walking faster back in 2022, with a Kickstarter project for strap-on powered wheels called Moonwalkers. Now the Carnegie Mellon spinoff is launching a business-specific variant called the Moonwalkers X.

NASA has awarded a Space Act Agreement to Special Aerospace Services to develop a commercial version of the space agency's Autonomous Maneuvering Unit (AMU) astronaut jetpack for use outside of privately owned orbital outposts.

Space startup Vast has announced that it intends to launch what it calls the world's first commercial space station, Haven-1, sometime after August 2025 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the first element of a 100-m (330 ft) rotating station.

The 2022 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter is a commercial van with an extremely varied capability. There are three engine options, rear-wheel or four-wheel drive setups, and two wheelbase lengths. We put the 2500 Cargo model through its paces.

After delays due to bad weather back on Earth, Axiom-1 (Ax-1), history's first all-private mission to the International Space Mission (ISS), returned to Earth. At 1:06 pm EDT, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down off the coast of Florida.

History was made today when Axiom Mission 1, the first private crewed mission to the International Space Station, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:17 am EDT from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A new company has entered the commercial space race. Startup Radian Aerospace has emerged from stealth to announce it has secured US$27.5 million in seed funding to develop a single-stage to orbit (SSTO) spaceplane designed to lift and land horizontally.

Europe is getting into the space manufacturing race as the European Commission awards Airbus a €3-million (US$3.5-million) contract to study the potential for assembling spacecraft in low-Earth orbit using robotic systems.

NASA has awarded Astrobotic a US$199.5-million contract to deliver the space agency's VIPER to the Moon. The Pittsburgh-based lunar logistics company will provide end-to-end delivery of the unmanned water-prospecting rover under NASA's CLPS program.

A UK-based company has carried out the first static engine test of a space rocket in Britain in over half a century. The Skylark L rocket carried out a full-scale launch test while restrained to the ground at the Kildemorie Estate in North Scotland.