DUBAI, UAE (SSC PR) — Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and Masten Space Systems has signed an agreement to provide communications support for Masten’s upcoming mission to the lunar south pole scheduled to launch in 2023. The agreement was announced today at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2021 in Dubai.

LONG BEACH, Calif. (Port of Long Beach PR) — The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners on Thursday approved an agreement with ABL Space Systems to build a spacecraft processing facility at the Port of Long Beach and use waterfront area for the delivery and shipping of its cargo.

Founded in 2017, El Segundo-based ABL Space Systems will take over 8.06 acres of land and 1.31 acres of submerged land at the Navy Mole on the Port’s Pier T, which was formerly part of the Long Beach Naval Station.

“We welcome ABL Space Systems to the Port of Long Beach family. It’s exciting to add yet another tenant in the rapidly growing spacecraft technology industry,” said Long Beach Harbor Commission President Steven Neal. “We look forward to what we know will be a mutually beneficial relationship with our newest tenant.”

Multi-year contracts showcase Greater Wichita region’s world-class manufacturers and historic leadership in aerospace innovation

WICHITA, Kan. (Blue Origin PR) — Blue Origin announced today that it has signed multi-year contracts with four Greater Wichita area companies: Accurus Aerospace Wichita, C.E. Machine Company Inc, Harlow Aerostructures LLC, and Orizon Aerostructures, LLC. These contracts will support Blue Origin’s engine programs as well as New Glenn, Blue Origin’s reusable heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle designed to support commercial, civil, and national security space missions.

“Accurus Wichita is proud to be a supplier partner with Blue Origin, and we believe these important programs will benefit from the deep aerospace manufacturing expertise in the greater Wichita area,” said Larry Johnson, President and General Manager of Accurus Aerospace Wichita, LLC.

by Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters

How do we understand the significance of new scientific results related to the search for life? When would we be able to say, “yes, extraterrestrial life has been found?” 

NASA scientists are encouraging the scientific community to establish a new framework that provides context for findings related to the search for life. Writing in the journal Nature, they propose creating a scale for evaluating and combining different lines of evidence that would  ultimately lead to answering the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?   

By Nicole QuenelleNASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center MOJAVE, Calif. — Video capture during future lunar landings could play an important role in contributing to researchers’ understanding of disturbances in lunar surface materials – called regolith – caused by the lander’s rocket plume. With support from NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, on Oct. 14, 2021, researchers from Los Angeles-based Zandef Deksit put a high-tech video capture and regolith sensor payload called ExoCam to the […]

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA is updating its coverage of the upcoming launch and docking activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission with astronauts to the International Space Station. This is the third crew rotation mission with astronauts on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and the fourth flight with astronauts, including the Demo-2 test flight, as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — In accordance with the Russian flight program of the International Space Station, on October 30, 2021, at 04:31:19 Moscow time, the Progress MS-18 transport cargo vehicle was docked. The operations of docking and docking to the Zvezda service module were carried out automatically under the control of specialists from the Mission Control Center of TsNIIMash, the Main Operational Control Group of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation named after S.P. Korolev (part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) and the Russian crew members of the ISS-66, Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 1:10 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Nov. 3, for the agency’s Crew-3 launch to the International Space Station due to a large storm system meandering across the Ohio Valley and through northeastern United States this weekend, elevating winds and waves in the Atlantic Ocean along the Crew Dragon flight path for the Oct. 31 launch attempt. Weather conditions along the ascent […]

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (Q Station PR) – Q Station, a collaborative workspace supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory and U.S. Space Force has chosen six companies for its inaugural Soft Landing Space Tech Cohort. The year-long program will give companies an opportunity to work in the growing New Mexico space ecosystem and to learn more about the U.S.’ space technology needs and how they may be able to work with the federal government to meet those needs. 

The inaugural Soft Landing Space Tech Cohort companies and their headquarters are:

• Blue Eye Soft – South Carolina — creates AI models that predict satellite anomalies due to space weather events.
• Equatorial Space Systems – Singapore — developing proprietary hybrid propulsion technology.
• Leaf Space – Italy — provides ground segment systems for microsats.
• Neutron Star Systems- Germany — produces electric propulsion system for spacecraft.
• Rogue Space Systems – New Hampshire — designs satellite vehicles and subsystems to provide on-orbit services to satellite operators.
• SPiN Tech – Germany — produces a universal adapter to transform incompatible off-the-shelf components to plug-and-play for satellites. 

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — A new study shows how the chemicals in an exoplanet’s atmosphere can, in some cases, reveal whether or not the temperature on its surface is too hot for liquid water.

In our solar system, planets are either small and rocky (like Earth) or large and gaseous (like Neptune). But around other stars, astronomers have found planets that fall in between – worlds slightly larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. These planets may have rocky surfaces or liquid-water oceans, but most are likely to be topped with atmospheres that are many times thicker than Earth’s and opaque.

MOJAVE, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Large Vehicle Landing Surface Interaction project team is working to develop a landing pad concept for the Moon that could one day be constructed directly on the lunar surface. Researchers from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida who are working on improving plume surface interaction models traveled to the Mojave Desert in California to conduct materials testing with Masten Space Systems late last year. […]

EDWARDS, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA seeks to improve a variety of Earth and space-based capabilities, including detecting and tracking wildfires, identifying plumes of gas venting into Earth’s atmosphere, and precision tracking of small spacecraft positions in orbit. The NASA TechLeap Prize is helping to advance these types of technologies for space exploration and Earth observation.

The agency has named three winners in the first TechLeap Prize competition, Autonomous Observation Challenge No. 1. The proposed solutions will help rapidly advance small spacecraft technologies for autonomous observation of events on Earth and beyond, as well as improve communications and computing power in small spacecraft applications. The winning teams will each receive an initial $200,000 prize they can use to begin building their payloads for a later suborbital flight test.