Space

WASHINGTON — Venezuela’s first and only state-owned communications satellite has been out of service since March 13 when a series of maneuvers left it tumbling in an unusable orbit. The VeneSat-1 satellite, built by China Great Wall Industry Corp and launched in late 2008 on a 15-year mission to provide television and broadband services to

SAN FRANCISCO – Demand is growing for satellite imagery to gauge the economic impact of the new coronavirus and to conduct remote monitoring of facilities and infrastructure. Ursa Space Systems, a satellite data and analytics firm in Ithaca, New York, can see the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global oil inventories. Ursa offers customers

WASHINGTON — A study by a space propulsion company concludes that a human return to the moon by 2024 will require minimizing the launches needed for the lunar lander and also using storable, rather than cryogenic, propellants. Aerojet Rocketdyne was one of 11 companies that received contracts in May 2019 from NASA as part of

WASHINGTON and SAN FRANCISCO — Maxar Technologies warned customers that it may not be able to deliver spacecraft on time or on budget due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, satellite manufacturing and testing are continuing in its California facilities.  In a March 20 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Maxar said Santa Clara,

Ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the global space industry. Scroll down for daily updates. Follow our reporters on Twitter for updates. Sign up for our newsletters. For full stories, click here. Space events delayed or canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic MARCH 22 Rocket Lab is proceeding with upcoming launches after being classified as an

Virgin Orbit spokesman: “Unavoidably, this will have some impact on our launch date, and on the launches that immediately follow.” WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit announced March 20 that it will continue operations at its facility in Long Beach, California, after state officials categorized the work as an essential service that should not be completely shut

WASHINGTON — The next meeting of the National Space Council, already scaled back because of the coronavirus pandemic, has been postponed, the White House announced March 21. In a brief statement, the White House said that the March 24 meeting of the council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, had been postponed to a date

WASHINGTON — Arianespace launched 34 small broadband satellites for OneWeb March 21, expanding the startup’s constellation to 74 satellites in low Earth orbit.  Arianespace’s Soyuz rocket lifted off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:06 p.m. Eastern. The satellites will separate at an altitude of 450 kilometers over the course of the 3-hour and

WASHINGTON — NASA has suspended work on the James Webb Space Telescope as it prioritizes what agency missions require people to be on site during the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement March 20, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said NASA had completed an assessment of work across the agency, deciding which projects are essential enough to

Ellen Lord memo: “If you work in a critical infrastructure industry you have a special responsibility to maintain your normal work schedule.” WASHINGTON — Defense Department contractors in sectors such as aerospace, manufacturing and intelligence are part of the United States’ critical infrastructure and have to continue working during the coronavirus emergency, Undersecretary of Defense

WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab is continuing with preparations for a launch later this month despite the coronavirus pandemic, although another small launch company’s plans for a launch this month remain unclear. Rocket Lab spokesperson Morgan Bailey said March 19 that the company was still planning to launch an Electron rocket from New Zealand later this

WASHINGTON — NASA has elevated two centers to the highest level of its pandemic response plan, halting preparations for a major test of the Space Launch System. In a statement late March 19, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi will move

WASHINGTON —  The global space industry stands to fare better than other industries buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic because demand for its services are largely undiminished by the outbreak, according to a report released March 18.  Government customers in defense and emergency response have robust needs for satellite connectivity and geospatial data in times of crisis, and

Spaceship Earth has a deadly infection, and it has already spread to all decks and levels. Not to be overly dramatic, as only a small percentage of people will lose their lives in this pandemic, but the specter is there, and may come as close as a colleague, neighbor, family member or even our own

The report is in final draft and on track to be delivered by March 31. WASHINGTON — Space Force officials have been working to meet required congressional report deadlines even as DoD business and operations across the board are being disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. A report due to Congress on March 31 will recommend

The U.S. Space Force continues to carry out key duties such as supporting space launches and monitoring potential threats in outer space. WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic has crippled many activities across the U.S. military but essential duties are being performed, officials said. The U.S. Space Force continues to carry out key duties such as

WASHINGTON — NASA and the National Academies are set to start the next planetary science decadal survey, one that will place an increased emphasis on areas like astrobiology and planetary defense. In a virtual town hall meeting March 16, representatives of NASA and the National Academies’ Space Studies Board (SSB) said they have approved the

WASHINGTON — Gogo, an in-flight Wi-Fi provider with capacity on 34 satellites, will seek price concessions to rein in bandwidth costs as airlines continue to ground flights amid coronavirus-related travel bans.  Gogo CEO Oakleigh Thorne said the coronavirus pandemic is partly behind the company’s cost-saving efforts, since decreased airline traffic has had a knock-on effect

WASHINGTON — NASA will spend nearly $1 billion on a mobile launch platform for the Space Launch System that will be used for no more than four launches, a NASA report released March 17 revealed. The report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), the second in as many weeks about NASA’s exploration programs, blamed

WASHINGTON – L3Harris Technologies has redesigned its patented unfurlable mesh reflector antenna to meet growing demand from firms building satellites weighing roughly 180 to 1,000 kilograms. The latest version, called Smallsat Perimeter Truss, is one-third smaller and half the weight of the Advanced Perimeter Truss, which L3Harris produces for large government and commercial geostationary satellites.

Launch providers should understand that mission success is not measured by the cost of adequate mission assurance, but the price of inadequate mission assurance. You’ve heard the buzz surrounding the new space race and the growing convoy of commercial space companies that promise brilliant technologies and novel commercial processes at cutthroat prices. Air Force Space

WASHINGTON — A startup developing a balloon-borne small launch vehicle has gone into “hibernation” after struggling to raise money, a fate that may be facing many other companies in the sector. In a March 13 letter to the company’s investors and other associates, Leo Aerospace said challenges raising funding and concerns about market timing led

The study says most space operational units and space acquisition organizations in DoD should be moved to the Space Force. WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Space Force begins to organize as an independent military service, it needs to clearly define its mission and work to develop a singular identity, says a RAND Corp. study released

Effective March 16, many DoD offices will shift to telework although it will not be mandatory. WASHINGTON — Starting Monday March 16, access to the Pentagon facilities will be restricted and offices in the building will operate on “minimum manning” to help contain the spread of the coronavirus, defense officials said March 14. In a

WASHINGTON — The Orion spacecraft that will fly on the first launch of the Space Launch System has completed testing at an Ohio facility and will soon be shipped back to the Kennedy Space Center for final launch preparations. NASA held a ceremony March 14 at Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, run by the

The company expects the 17,000 square-foot facility to open for business later this spring. WASHINGTON — Aerojet Rocketdyne announced it has installed a steel casting bell at its new facility in Camden, Arkansas, where it will develop and produce large solid rocket motors. Aerojet Rocketdyne’s vacuum chamber casting bell The company said March 12 it

WASHINGTON — As Russian officials give their final approval for the crew of the next Soyuz mission to the International Space Station, NASA’s space station manager says the swap of Russian cosmonauts should not pose a problem for the flight. The Russian space agency Roscosmos announced March 13 that the primary crew for the next

Updated at 11:30 a.m. EDT to add Space Foundation’s written statement announcing the postponement. WASHINGTON — One of the biggest space conferences of the year has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The 36th Space Symposium, which regularly attracts several thousand registrants and hundreds of exhibitors from around the world to the Broadmoor Hotel

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama announced March 14 that it is instituting a mandatory telework policy after an employee was diagnosed with the coronavirus disease COVID-19. In a statement, Jody Singer, director of Marshall, said the center received confirmation late March 13 that an unnamed employee had tested positive for COVID-19.

The annual Satellite conference in Washington is one of the industry’s biggest events of the year. Thousands come to the Washington Convention Center to hear from industry executives, show off their wares in the exhibit hall and make deals. This year was different. While organizers said immediately before the conference started March 9 that “roughly

WASHINGTON — A revised plan for returning astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2024 will no longer rely on the use of a lunar Gateway, although NASA’s human spaceflight head says the agency is still committed to eventually developing it. In a conversation with the NASA Advisory Council’s science committee March 13, Doug

WASHINGTON — Manufacturers are generally optimistic that last year’s rebound in commercial geostationary satellite market orders marks the beginning of trend. After two years of single-digit totals, manufacturers sold 15 geostationary satellites in 2019.   At the Satellite 2020 conference, executives from Airbus, Boeing, Maxar, Thales Alenia Space and Northrop Grumman expressed confidence that commercial business

WASHINGTON — NASA announced March 12 it will fly two heliophysics and space weather experiments on the lunar Gateway to collect data to help future human missions to the moon and beyond. The payloads are the first science experiments selected to go on the lunar Gateway, a human-tended facility NASA plans to assemble in a

The contract is for the program known as EDIS (engineering, development, integration and sustainment). WASHINGTON — SAIC was re-awarded a $655 million contract for satellite ground systems services that it originally won in January 2019 and was successfully protested by Peraton. The contract awarded by the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center is

HELSINKI — The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will not launch in 2020 due to a lack of time to test and qualify problematic parachutes and electronics vital to the spacecraft. European Space Agency director-general Jan Woerner made the announcement in a press conference Thursday after a meeting with Dmitry Rogozin, head of mission partner

WASHINGTON — International Launch Services has hired a longtime United Launch Alliance executive as its new president as the company expands to offer Soyuz launch services and potentially human spaceflight missions. ILS announced March 11 that Tiphaine Louradour is the company’s new president, effective immediately. ILS had been without a full-time president since the departure

WASHINGTON – The Space Development Agency (SDA) is evaluating how cloud computing could bolster its campaign to quickly identify and track missiles. “We believe in proliferation for sensing and communications,” Joy Stein, SDA tracking layer lead, said at the Satellite 2020 conference here. “That is one of the reasons that I believe we’ll head toward

WASHINGTON — The cost of NASA’s Space Launch System has grown to the point where the agency must notify Congress and perform a formal reassessment of the program, NASA’s inspector general concluded in a March 10 report. The report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the SLS program’s costs through the rocket’s

WASHINGTON – Commercial firms continue to develop innovative geospatial products, which leaders of defense and intelligence agencies say they are eager to adopt. But it’s not easy for those products to make their way into day-to-day operations of those agencies, according to panelists at the Satellite 2020 conference here. Even if a startup wins a

Tory Bruno: “We are limiting non essential business travel but that doesn’t include launch and rockets.” WASHINGTON — Defense Department and NASA launch provider United Launch Alliance is implementing emergency measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak but continues to support upcoming missions, the company’s CEO Tory Bruno said March 10 during a meeting with

WASHINGTON — Small launch vehicle developers say they don’t see a “race to the bottom” for launch prices despite the large number of companies developing vehicles and the emergence of new rideshare options. During a panel at the Satellite 2020 conference here March 9, executives with two leading small launch vehicle companies, Rocket Lab and

WASHINGTON — As the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak grows worldwide, executives believe the space industry will not be immune from its effects but also may not be hurt as badly as other sectors. The spread of the coronavirus disease, formally known as COVID-19, continues to grow both in the United States and other

WASHINGTON — SpaceX has no plans to make Starlink a separate business, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive, said March 9.  Musk, speaking at the Satellite 2020 conference here, said SpaceX is “thinking about that zero,” instead focusing mainly on ensuring Starlink doesn’t flop.  The precedent set by past companies that attempted big telecom

HELSINKI — China successfully launched a Beidou positioning, navigation and timing satellite Monday as the country nears completion of its answer to the GPS system. The Long March 3B/E rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 7:55 a.m. Eastern. The Beidou GEO-2 satellite was sent into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The China Aerospace

Planet felt like it didn’t have a choice. When the Earth-observation startup began launching cameras into orbit in 2013 and 2014, manufacturing lines weren’t churning out cubesats by the dozens. That’s no longer the case. Blue Canyon Technologies, AAC Clyde Space, GomSpace, NanoAvionics, Tyvak and several others are ready and willing to build cubesats en

“All problems become smaller when you confront them instead of dodging them.” — William F. Halsey Once a safe haven, the space above Earth’s atmosphere is congested and contested — and the problem is getting worse. A determined adversary can disable or eliminate a satellite it views as a threat. As the national security of

When the bipartisan leadership of the House Science Committee introduced a NASA authorization bill Jan. 24, it surprised many people in the civil space community. The bill appeared to reject the goal of NASA’s Artemis program to return humans to the moon by 2024, requiring instead a return only by 2028. It also spurned NASA’s

The U.S. Space Force is just beginning to organize as a new branch of the armed forces and its leaders face a daunting to-do list. High on that list is figuring out the management of space acquisitions. Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act created a new position of assistant secretary of the Air