Spaceflight

Virgin Galactic is keeping SpaceShipTwo’s flight schedule under wraps even as the company unveiled the new model at a splashy ceremony Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company did emphasize the spacecraft is already undergoing an elaborate series of component tests in the name of safety. “Our commitment to safety can be […]

Virgin Galactic will roll out a replacement SpaceShipTwo suborbital space plane on Friday and while it will look the same as the one that crashed in 2014 there are some important internal differences. According to the Verge, the company says the new vehicle has more automation and failsafe systems designed to prevent the kind of […]

GA pilots will have affordable Wi-Fi in their airplanes within about three years and much greater access to space-based services thanks to a $3 billion investment by a Virginia company. Starting in April, Iridium will launch the first of 72 new communications satellites that will, among other things, increase the speed of its Internet signals […]

Sierra Nevada Corp., which has developed a reusable, runway-landing space vehicle, will join SpaceX and Orbital ATK in the next cycle of NASA missions to the International Space Station. NASA on Thursday announced it has picked the three companies to conduct the spaceflights between 2019 and 2024. Each will operate a minimum of six missions, […]

This week’s successful landing and recovery of a launch booster by SpaceX got a lot favorable coverage and was an impressive feat. But as a classically trained aeronautical engineer who spent more than three decades flying crewed rocket ships into space, I have always looked at the concept of a fly-back booster with skepticism. The […]

Pieces of the F-1 rocket engines that launched the Apollo 12 mission 46 years ago are at The Museum of Flight in Seattle after undergoing a 2 1/2-year restoration. An injector plate was among the pieces unveiled by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos in November as part of the future exhibit, which will include Apollo mission artifacts […]

Jim Remar, president and COO of the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center, talks with AVweb’s Elaine Kauh about the restoration project that will bring parts of the Apollo mission engines into the public eye for the first time since the historic flights took place. Duration: 12:12 File Size: 5.9 MB download here

Virgin Galactic’s plans to take small commercial satellites into space took on a new twist this week — on-demand flights via an airliner that would serve as mothership for launching its new space vehicle, LauncherOne.During a ceremony in Texas, Virgin founder Richard Branson unveiled “Cosmic Girl,” a Boeing 747 transferred from his Virgin Atlantic airline. […]

NASA, which posts want ads when it needs more astronauts, will accept applications in a few weeks for new candidates. The agency will open up the submission process on the federal job-application website between Dec. 14 through mid-February. Among the base qualifications are a degree in engineering, math, biology or physical science, and at least […]

Faulty design and manufacturing of engine components were among likely causes of the Orbital Sciences rocket explosion a year ago, according to a report (PDF) this week from a NASA-appointed review team. The unmanned Antares rocket, carrying cargo to the International Space Station, exploded at a commercial launch site in Virginia on Oct. 28, 2014. […]