Aerojet, a GenCorp company, announced April 26 that it successfully completed development testing of its MR-104H 100 lbf-class monopropellant hydrazine thruster. Working with Boeing Exploration Launch Systems and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Aerojet successfully completed environmental and hot-fire performance testing of the MR-104H in Redmond, Wash. The MR-104 product line matured under NASA’s Constellation…

Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, told a post-scrub press conference that the failure to launch Falcon9-Dragon to the International Space Station early May 19 was “aborted with purpose” and so not a failure. Regardless, the next launch attempt has been postponed until at least May 22 at 3:44 a.m., EDT. May 23 provides another possible…

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. – The preflight test layers of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope sunshield are meeting expected performance targets during tests by engineers at Northrop Grumman. The company is under contract to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for the design and development of Webb’s sunshield, telescope and spacecraft. One of the…

NASA’s most advanced planetary rover is on a precise course for an early August landing beside a Martian mountain to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work. However, getting the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars will not be easy. “The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history…

NASA has selected six indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity multiple award construction contracts at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. The fixed price contracts consist of a performance period of five years, with a total value not to exceed $700 million.   The companies selected are as follows: Advon Corporation, Tallahassee, Fla. Birmingham…

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. – The spacecraft that will carry NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to its orbit nearly a million miles from Earth has completed a Critical Design Review for the structure that supports Webb’s data link to NASA’s ground station. Northrop Grumman is under contract to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.,…

NASA Television will provide live coverage of events surrounding three International Space Station crew members who are scheduled to end four months on the orbiting laboratory with a landing in Kazakhstan Sept. 16. Expedition 32 Flight Engineer Joe Acaba of NASA and Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin of the Russian Federal Space…

Lockheed Martin is making steady progress in a key test phase on GeoEye’s next-generation, high-resolution imaging satellite, GeoEye-2, as IKONOS, the world’s first commercial remote sensing spacecraft marks 13 years of outstanding services for GeoEye’s customers around the globe. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company is developing GeoEye-2 under a fixed-price contract with GeoEye. The satellite…

Space Exploration Technologies has completed its first three performance milestones for NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability initiative, which is intended to lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial customers. During the company’s first milestone, a technical baseline review, NASA and SpaceX reviewed the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket…