Editor’s Note: A good overview. But, VSS Enterprise broke up, it didn’t explode.

ABL Space Systems scrubbed the maiden launch of its RS1 booster on Monday from the Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska on Kodiak Island. “Off-nominal data was observed during Stage 1 fill at T-30 minutes. Countdown has been scrubbed for the day,” the company tweeted. ABL Space has daily launch windows that last from 1:00 – 4:00 AKST (5:00 – 8:00 p.m. EST/22:00 – 01:00 UTC) through Monday, Nov. 21. The […]

Ball Aerospace has announced that it had total sales of $3.95 billion for the third quarter. Net earnings of $392 million, including a net after-tax gain of $154 million. Diluted earnings per share were $1.24.

Ball Aerospace had a $3 billion backlog of aerospace orders with $4.6 billion in contracts won but not booked into the backlog at the end of the third quarter, the company said in an earnings announcement.

Ball had operating earnings of $47 million on sales of $477 million. Comparable figures were $46 million in operating earnings on sales of $498 million in the third quarter of 2021. Operating earnings for the first nine months of this year were $126 million sales of $1.47 billion, compared to $115 million on sales of $1.38 billion during the same period of 2021.

Satellite-as-a-service company Sidus Space reported increased revenues in the third quarter and a $3.9 million net loss.

The company said revenue increased to $1.32 million, an increase of 164 percent over the $500,000 earned in the same period last year. Sidus Space had $4.4 million in cash on Sept. 30.

NASA will make another attempt to launch the Artemis I mission to the moon on Wednesday as small-satellite launch provider ABL Space Systems prepares for the maiden flight of its RS1 booster from Alaska.

– Autonomous orbital test vehicle spent 908 days on orbit before landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

– This mission marks the first time the vehicle hosted a service module, which successfully carried experiments for Naval Research Laboratory, U.S. Air Force Academy and other partners.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., Nov. 12, 2022— The Boeing [NYSE: BA] built X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) set a new endurance record after spending 908 days on orbit before landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:22 a.m. ET, November 12, 2022. This surpasses its previous record of 780 days on-orbit.

The United States and China launched supply ship to their respective space stations last week as NASA delayed the launch of the Artemis mission until Nov. 16 due to a hurricane. United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched the newest U.S. weather satellite and an innovative NASA heat shield that could be used to land astronauts and payloads on Mars.

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFRL PR) —  The Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded a $72 million contract to Advanced Space LLC to demonstrate space situational awareness, object detection and tracking in the region of the Moon, supporting a resurgence of interest in lunar exploration and development across civil, commercial and international space agencies.

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFRL) —  The SpaceWERX Orbital Prime program awarded 124 Phase 1 contracts from June 15 to Sept. 22, 2022, each with a five-month term valued at $250,000. Orbital Prime, which is the first space effort under the SpaceWERX Prime line of business, intends to invigorate the In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing, or ISAM, market using Active Debris Remediation as a use case for the foundational technologies. The awards, made under the Department of the Air Force’s Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, program, administered by AFWERX, represent the first phase of the Orbital Prime program.

Satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital reported record revenue of $27.8 million in the third quarter, an increase of 171 percent compared with the same time period last year. The company also reported a record backlog of orders worth $198 million, an increase of 168 percent over the end of 2021.

Terran Orbit’s third quarter net loss was $27.4 million, which was lower than the $32.3 million net loss for the second quarter of this year.

An United Launch Alliance Atlas V launched America’s newest weather satellite, NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2), from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:32 a.m. PST on Thursday. After hours of difficulty in deploying the spacecraft’s solar array, NASA says the array is now fully extended and JPSS-2 is performing normally.

NASA has conducted a successful flight test of a novel inflatable heat shield that could one day land humans and large payloads on Mars.