WASHINGTON – While the U.S Air Force is taking more steps to oversee nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3), the service must focus more on short-term problems than long-term issues, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in its report, “Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications: Update on Air Force Oversight Effort […]
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This article originally appeared in the July 3, 2017 issue of SpaceNews magazine. Mars 2020 is an ambitious mission. NASA plans to gather 20 rock cores and soil samples within 1.25 Mars years, or about 28 Earth months — a task that would be impossible without artificial intelligence because the rover would waste […]
North Korea’s threat to strike Guam with a salvo of ballistic missiles has raised the stakes for a U.S. missile shield some see as compromised by potentially exploitable seams in its all-important space layer. Years of program changes, delays and cancellations have created gaps in parts of the space-based layer […]
WASHINGTON — RigNet, a supplier of telecommunications services to the oil and gas industry, has pulled out of a $65 million capacity lease on Inmarsat’s Global Xpress satellite constellation, triggering a legal dispute between the two companies. In an Aug. 8 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, RigNet […]
SANTA FE, N.M. — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched a Dragon cargo spacecraft Aug. 14 with a diverse payload of science experiments for the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:31 p.m. Eastern, and […]
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The U.S. Army is set to launch its Kestrel Eye electro-optical microsatellite Aug. 14 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, service officials said last week at the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium. The Kestrel Eye satellite, built by Adcole Maryland Aerospace, is due to launch from […]
WASHINGTON — A satellite that Spanish fleet operator Hispasat ordered in December 2014 largely to replace two Orbital ATK spacecraft has arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a Proton launch in September. Amazonas-5 covers for Amazonas-4A, an Orbital ATK-built satellite that lost capacity due to a power issue […]
WASHINGTON — Italian small satellite builder Sitael has signed Virgin Orbit to send a technology demonstration satellite into low-Earth orbit next year. Sitael’s µHETsat, a demonstrator for a new electric propulsion system built with the European and Italian space agencies, will fly on LauncherOne “mid-next year,” Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit […]