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The launches included successful maiden flights for three new launch vehicles. With a dozen more new launch vehicles expected to debut, 2024 appears poised to be a game-changing year in orbital flight.
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Four years into his tenure atop the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency, Derek Tournear saw key goals realized in 2023. The first small, commercially built satellites for missile warning and communications are set to change how the Pentagon detects missile threats
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As of mid-March, 685 astronauts have reached at least 80 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. This total includes 86 private astronauts, 22 times as many as there were two decades ago.
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Space holds nearly limitless commercial and scientific potential. It is also essential to national security: maintaining freedom of action in space, and the protection of space-based assets, is fundamental. Rivals, led by China . . .
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For space programs and companies, the Moon looms large as a contested frontier of space access and commercialization. The cadence of attempted Moon landings is increasing.
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Introduction | Commercial space has come of age, offering cheaper alternatives to civil government and military satellites while delivering services ranging from secure communications and battlefield intelligence to pinpoint weather…
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Growing threats from anti-satellite weapons were spotlighted in February when U.S. officials warned Congress about a Russian weapons development program targeting spacecraft with nuclear weapons.
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SpaceX launched its Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station, surpassing 50 humans sent to space by the company. This is the first spaceflight for spacecraft commander Matthew Dominick and specialists Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin. However, it is pilot Michael Barratt’s third voyage into orbit.
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Averaging a liftoff every 33 hours and 49 minutes, January’s 22 successful launches to space marked the busiest start to a year since the Space Age dawned in 1957, and put the globe on track for 259 launches in 2024, which would easily eclipse records set in 2023, according to a Space Foundation database.
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A Sunday launch that placed three Iranian satellites into orbit could signal the Islamic Republic’s ability to use its launch vehicles to deliver warheads to distant targets, warned retired Air Force Gen. Lance Lord, a former leader of Pentagon space efforts. Announced by Iran’s state news agency IRNA, the Sunday launch was the nation’s second successful space mission in the past month and the first to deliver multiple satellites. The three satellites, Mahda, Keyhan-2, and Hatef-1, were described by Iran as research satellites designed to test a variety of technologies including communications.
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