HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA will provide live coverage of the undocking and departure of the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) prior to its return to Earth from the International Space Station.

The four-member private astronaut crew is scheduled to undock at 10:35 a.m. Tuesday, April 19, to begin the journey home with splashdown off the coast of Florida no earlier than 7:19 a.m. EDT Wednesday, April 20. Teams will monitor weather at the splashdown sites prior to undocking to ensure conditions are acceptable for a safe recovery of the Dragon spacecraft and Ax-1 astronauts. If needed for any reason, there are additional opportunities for the crew’s departure from the space station on Tuesday, April 19 and Wednesday, April 20.

by Douglas MessierManaging Editor I recently spent a week housesitting down in LA where the temperatures reached into the 90’s. When I arrived back home to Mojave on Monday night, I found that spring had turned back into winter in the High Desert: overnight temps a few degrees above freezing, 50 mph wind gusts, chilly temperatures during the day. Although the temperatures have risen over the last few days, the […]

Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — In support of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to advance racial equity in the federal government, NASA has released its first-ever Equity Action Plan. The plan establishes key focus areas that will allow the agency to track progress toward improved diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility both internally and externally to NASA.

“At NASA, all of our missions depend on our steadfast commitment to equal opportunity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The Equity Action plan deepens our commitment to further identify and remove the barriers that limit opportunity in underserved and underrepresented communities. This framework anchors fairness as a core component in every NASA mission to make the work we do in space and beyond more accessible to all.”

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth in their Shenzhou-13 spacecraft on Saturday after spending six months aboard the nation’s first permanent space station.

Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and Wang Yaping landed in the Gobi Desert after 182 days in space. It was the longest Chinese crewed mission to date, nearly doubling the three months the crew of Shezhou-12 spent aboard the space station launched last April.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission sending astronauts to the International Space Station.

The launch is targeted for 5:26 a.m. EDT Saturday, April 23, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, dubbed by Crew-4 as Freedom, is scheduled to dock to the space station at 6 a.m. Sunday, April 24.

HELSINKI & LOS ANGELES, April 14, 2022 (TransAstra PR) –TransAstra, a provider of breakthrough orbital logistics and space domain awareness solutions, and ReOrbit, a provider of software-defined small satellites for beyond LEO missions, announced today that they have signed binding contracts for initial spacecraft development and orbital logistics services.

Under these contracts, TransAstra will provide mission definition and engineering analysis for TransAstra’s Worker Bee™ orbital transfer vehicles to deliver ReOrbit’s customer satellites to Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit, Geostationary Orbit, and Cis-Lunar orbits. In addition, ReOrbit will provide development options under which ReOrbit generates cost, feasibility, and integration considerations to complete the production and testing of Worker Bee. Under a separate Memorandum of Agreement, TransAstra will explore selecting ReOrbit as a preferred provider of microsats and smallsats for certain customer payloads, while ReOrbit will explore selecting TransAstra’s Worker Bee as the preferred supplier of orbital transport vehicle services, including satellite delivery and hosting.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — Teams concluded today’s wet dress rehearsal test at approximately 5:10 p.m. EDT after observing a liquid hydrogen (LH2) leak on the tail service mast umbilical, which is located at the base of the mobile launcher and connects to the rocket’s core stage. The leak was discovered during liquid hydrogen loading operations and prevented the team from completing the test.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — Media accreditation is open for prelaunch and launch activities for NASA’s Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station, the second uncrewed flight test of the company’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Liftoff on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Starliner is targeted for Thursday, May 19, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

by David Bullock
Staff Writer

Forty year old space industry company RUAG International renamed its company branding to “beyond gravity” in mid-March. The Swiss company attended the Satellite 2022 conference in Washington, D.C. that month to introduce its new name and promote its products and services. The company’s name will legally change May 1, 2022 and, so far, has profitability in YTD 2022.

JUSTIN, Texas, April 13, 2022 (Canoo Inc. PR) — The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has selected Canoo Inc. (Nasdaq: GOEV) a high-tech advanced mobility company to provide Crew Transportation Vehicles (CTVs) for crewed Artemis lunar exploration launches. Canoo will deliver multiple customized all-electric LV models to NASA by June 2023.

Congress is unable to make informed funding decisions about NASA’s multi-mission programs because the space agency is not providing it with federally mandated cost and schedule information, according to a new report from the NASA Office of Inspector General.

“Specifically, for the programs supporting Artemis, the Agency’s return-to-the-Moon and ultimately to Mars effort, NASA is circumventing required cost and schedule controls by categorizing certain production costs as operations costs when, in our opinion, they should be categorized as development costs,” the report said.

BROWNSVILLE, TX, April 1, 2022 (Expanding Frontiers PR) – Expanding Frontiers, a nonprofit organization devoted to developing commercial space, energy, and technology startups in South Texas has added Texas A&M International University to its efforts of fostering an ecosystem of innovation in NewSpace in the Rio Grande Valley.