SPACE in NEWS

NASA Turns Up the Heat on Construction of the Space Launch SystemHuntsville, AL (SPX) Apr 01, 2013 - Welding engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have had an extremely busy winter assembling adapters that will connect the Orion spacecraft to a Delta IV rocket for the initial test flight of Orion in 2014. The adapter later will attach Orion to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket managed and in development at the Marshall Center that wi ... more

Future Looks Bright for Private US Space VenturesWashington DC (RIA Novosti) Apr 01, 2013 From wealthy American technology executives to British billionaires, entrepreneurs are betting big on the emerging US private spaceflight industry. While some ventures claim to forge the path to US dominance, others aim to level the playing field for countries that lack space exploration programs. "The private sector is more efficient than the government and can do the same thing at a lo ..... more

Swiss firm plans robotic mini-shuttleA Swiss firm says it intends to construct a robotic rocket plane that will launch satellites into orbit off the back of a modified jetliner. Swiss Space Systems - S3 - says its unmanned suborbital shuttle could be traveling to launch height atop an Airbus A300 jetliner by 2017. "S3 aims to develop, build, certify and operate suborbital space shuttles dedicated to launching smal ... more

ATK Successfully Ground Tests New CASTOR 30XL Upper Stage Solid Rocket MotorATK has tested its newly developed CASTOR 30XL upper stage solid rocket motor at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) in Tennessee. The test was the final qualification for the ATK commercial motor, which was jointly developed by ATK and Orbital Sciences Corporation (ORB) in just 20 months from concept to completion. The CASTOR 30XL is designed to ignite ...more

Kazakhstan to launch first remote sensing satellite this year
The Kazakh space agency said  that it plans to launch the country's first Earth remote sensing satellite by the end of this year. "The launch of the first medium-resolution remote sen ... more

Europe sets June 5 for launch of space freighter
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced it would launch the fourth, and heaviest, in a series of hi-tech cargo vehicles to the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5. ... more
Beer Cans For Deep Space
The recent announcement of a NASA plan to drag an asteroid into lunar orbit with a robot spacecraft, then stage a crewed astronaut expedition to explore it, has stunned many boffins. The plan is hig ... more

XCOR Driving Rocket Science Forward With Lynx Suborbital VehicleMojave CA (SPX) Mar 28, 2013 - XCOR Aerospace has announced a first in aviation and space history, the firing of a full piston pump-powered rocket engine. This breakthrough is the foundation for fully reusable spacecraft that can fly multiple times per day, every day. It is a game changing technology that has the power to fundamentally alter the way we as a society view, visit, and utilize the abundant resources around  ... more