After a 15-year hiatus, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is returning to flying sounding rockets. The centerpiece of the HOT SHOT program, the suborbital rocket launches are designed to cut the development time for new weapon systems by a third while lowering R&D costs.
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Jeff Bezos has high hopes for his New Glenn rocket and its development has just received a nice helping hand. The US Air Force today announced it will handing Bezo’s space company Blue Origin half a billion dollars as part of its plan to usher in a new generation of heavy lift boosters.
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If Elon Musk’s palms were sweaty during any SpaceX rocket launches of late, just imagine eight famous cultural icons were strapped in for the ride. "We will be doing everything we possibly can to make sure that is a good flight," the CEO said today, and not in a hypothetical sense.
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Virgin Orbit is edging ever closer to its goal of firing rockets into space from an airborne 747, with the pylons that will carry its two-stage orbital launch vehicle, LauncherOne, to altitude now firmly fixed to the wing of its Cosmic Girl Mothership.
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Stratolaunch has yet to send its first payload into orbit, but the company announced today that it is developing a new family of air-launched boosters that will enter service in 2020. The four rockets of various sizes will be carried by the world's largest aircraft, the Stratolaunch.
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A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket lifted off from the company's Texas launch site at 10:11 am CDT on July 19. On its ninth test flight, engineers studied how the launch system operates on the edge of its design envelope.
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UK Space Agency has announced that Melness on the north coast of Scotland has been chosen for the country's first vertical launch spaceport with an initial grant of £2.5 million (US$3.3 million) to develop the site, which will be used to launch small satellites into orbit.
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DARPA's Phantom Express experimental spaceplane took a step closer to flight as Aerojet Rocketdyne announced that the AR-22 booster rocket engine successfully completed 10 test firings in 240 hours at NASA's Stennis Space Center.
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ESA is gearing up to test on one of the largest solid rocket motors ever built this week. At the space agency's Spaceport in French Guiana, the first complete P120C rocket motor will be mounted on a static test stand where 600 sensors will monitor the motor during its 135-second burn.
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Firing rockets from beneath the wings of an airborne 747 isn't the most conventional way to get satellites into space, but Virgin spinoff company Virgin Orbit has been awarded a license for its maiden attempt to do just that, with hopes of beginning commercial services before the year is out.
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