With a critical launch attempt looming at the end of the year, Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit is seeking up to $200 million in investment that could value the company at $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA will broadcast key events, including an Artemis program update, of the 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which takes place virtually Monday, Oct. 12, through Wednesday, Oct. 14. Coverage will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

During the conference, NASA will discuss international cooperation for the agency’s lunar exploration plans throughout the Artemis program, which includes sending American astronauts to the surface of the Moon in 2024 and establishing a sustainable lunar presence by the end of the decade.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — A trio of space travelers is poised to launch to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Oct. 14. NASA Television will provide comprehensive coverage of launch and docking.

Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos are preparing to launch aboard the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 1:45 a.m. EDT (10:45 a.m. Kazakhstan time) on a two-orbit, three-hour journey to dock to the station’s Rassvet module for the start of a six-month mission on the orbital outpost.

KIEV, Ukraine (State Space Agency of Ukraine PR) — On October 6, 2020, Volodymyr Usov, Chairman of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, took part in a meeting of the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (GUAM) working group on science and innovation of the Working Group on Science and Education.

During the meeting, the Ukrainian side made proposals to establish cooperation within GUAM in the field of space activities.

Volodymyr Usov stressed the expediency of uniting efforts in the space sphere at the regional level in order to expand capacity and increase efficiency.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — Launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station is now targeted for no sooner than early-to-mid November, providing additional time for SpaceX to complete hardware testing and data reviews as the company evaluates off-nominal behavior of Falcon 9 first stage engine gas generators observed during a recent non-NASA mission launch attempt. Through the agency’s Commercial Crew and Launch Services Programs partnership with SpaceX, NASA has full insight into the company’s launch and testing data.

Zee News reports the Indian government has approved a major tax break for space companies: Indian start-ups in the space sector have welcomed the government’s latest announcement to scrap the 18% GST that is levied on firms launching Indian satellites using ISRO rockets. This levy of GST on Indian firms had been forcing Indian satellite-builders to launch their satellites from foreign soil using foreign rockets. Ironically, foreign firms were exempt […]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the company is close to public beta testing on its Starlink satellite broadband service after the launch of 60 additional satellites aboard a Falcon 9 booster on Tuesday. “We will be able to roll out a fairly wide public beta [service] in northern US and hopefully southern Canada,” he tweeted. “Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval.” The satellites launched this […]

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will give a keynote address at the virtual fall Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium meeting at 11:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 14. The event, co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and Arizona State University, will stream live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

BERN, Switzerland (University of Bern PR) — An international team of researchers led by the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS of the University of Bern and the University of Geneva studied the atmosphere of the ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-121b. In it, they found a number of gaseous metals. The results are a next step in the search for potentially habitable worlds.

TOKYO (NICT PR) — Using radio telescopes observing distant stars, scientists have connected optical atomic clocks on different continents. The results were published in the scientific journal Nature Physics (DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-01038-6) by an international collaboration between 33 astronomers and clock experts at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, Japan), the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM, Italy), the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF, Italy), and the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM, France).  

MONTREAL (GHGSat PR) — GHGSat, the global leader in high resolution greenhouse gas monitoring from space, today announced the first results from its latest satellite GHGSat-C1 (“Iris”), which already indicates performance 5 times better than its predecessor.

LONGUEUIL, Quebec (CSA PR) — In a detailed study published today, Canadian scientist  Michael Daly (York University) and his team revealed that the data gathered by Canadian OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) enabled new insights into near-Earth asteroid Bennu. The paper is part of a special collection on Bennu appearing today in Science and Science Advances.