Three new crew members are on their way to the International Space Station. NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams, Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:40 p.m., EDT, July 14. Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide are scheduled to dock their…

NASA has selected six proposals to improve the affordability, reliability and performance of an advanced booster for the Space Launch System. The awardees will develop engineering demonstrations and risk reduction concepts for SLS, a heavy-lift rocket that will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. “The initial SLS heavy-lift rocket…

HAWTHORNE, Calif. – NASA partner Space Exploration Technologies has completed an important design review of the crewed version of its Dragon spacecraft. The concept baseline review presented NASA with the primary and secondary design elements of its Dragon capsule designed to carry astronauts into low Earth orbit, including the International Space Station. SpaceX is one…

Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Space Systems has successfully completed testing of the nose landing gear for the Dream Chaser® orbital crew vehicle. This milestone evaluated the impact forces experienced by the landing gear at the front of the vehicle, the nose, in order to ensure safe runway landing capability of the Dream Chaser during approach and…

NASA astronaut Mark Polansky has left the agency. His last day with NASA was June 30. Polansky is a veteran of three space shuttle missions. He flew as a pilot on the STS-98 mission in 2001 and served as commander for STS-116 in 2006 and STS-127 in 2009. Polansky ends his NASA career with more…

Consolidating a relationship now entering into its 30th year, Eutelsat Communications and Arianespace announced July 10 the conclusion of a new launch services contract for a future Eutelsat satellite. The assignment of the launch to a satellite will be made at a later stage. The contract for an Ariane 5 launch from the Guiana Space…

NASA partner Sierra Nevada Corporation has completed a successful test of the nose landing gear for its full-scale Dream Chaser engineering flight test vehicle. The completed test and an upcoming flight test are part of SNC’s Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The gear test is an important milestone…

The Midland Development Corporation and XCOR Aerospace jointly announced July 9 the establishment of XCOR’s new Commercial Space Research and Development Center Headquarters that will be created over the next 18 months in Midland, Texas. XCOR manufactures reusable rocket engines for major aerospace prime contractors and is the designer, manufacturer and operator of the Lynx,…