Tag: NASA

  • Soyuz MS-29 Docks at ISS With NASA Astronaut Menon

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    Did Soyuz MS-29 Successfully Dock at the ISS With a NASA Astronaut Aboard? Three hours and five minutes. That was the elapsed time from liftoff at Baikonur to docking at the International Space Station for Soyuz MS-29 on July 14, 2026 — a textbook fast-rendezvous profile that deposited NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts…

  • Voyager Wins $298M NASA Contract After Astrobotic Deal

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    Does Voyager’s $298M NASA Contract Validate the Astrobotic Acquisition? $298 million. That single NASA task order — awarded June 30, 2026, and announced publicly alongside the close of Voyager Technologies’ acquisition of Astrobotic Technology — may be the clearest signal yet that the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) pipeline is maturing into a real, recurring…

  • Elon Musk’s Mars illusion

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    Elon Musk takes a bow at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in May 2020 after the launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, which carried two astronauts to the International Space Station, about 250 miles up, and a world away from Mars. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) Ever since its founding, SpaceX has fixed upon a…

  • City Labs Launches Commercial Nuclear-Powered CubeSat on SpaceX Rideshare Mission

    City Labs Launches Commercial Nuclear-Powered CubeSat on SpaceX Rideshare Mission

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    City Labs has launched what it describes as the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite, marking a milestone in the development of alternative power systems for spacecraft. The company’s BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) spacecraft was launched aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-17 rideshare mission. According to City Labs, it is also the first CubeSat to carry a commercial nuclear…

  • Firefly Gets $13M to Build NASA Skyfall Mars Aeroshell

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    Is Firefly Aerospace Building the Heat Shield for NASA’s Mars Helicopter Mission? Yes — and JPL just cut a $13 million check to make it happen. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has awarded Firefly Aerospace a $13 million subcontract to design and manufacture the aeroshell for the Skyfall mission — NASA’s first nuclear-powered interplanetary probe, targeting…

  • Atlas V Flight 110 Done: 6 Rockets Locked to Starliner

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    Are ULA’s Last Six Atlas V Rockets Stranded on Starliner? The Atlas V completed its 110th flight last Thursday — and the six rockets remaining in United Launch Alliance’s inventory can now only fly one customer: Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule. A hardware incompatibility with Vulcan’s payload fairing, the retirement of Atlas V’s five-booster configuration, and…

  • NASA SBA Partnership Targets Space Supply Chain Gaps

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    Does NASA’s New SBA Partnership Fix the Space Supply Chain? NASA and the U.S. Small Business Administration signed a memorandum of agreement last week that directs at least 60% of participating investment fund capital toward seven NASA-identified technology focus areas — a structural fix aimed squarely at a fragile supplier base that industry groups say…

  • Katalyst LINK Launches to Reboost NASA Swift Observatory

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    Is NASA’s Swift Observatory About to Be Saved by a $30M On-Orbit Servicing Mission? Katalyst Space’s LINK on-orbit servicing spacecraft lifted off at 4:26 a.m. EDT on July 4, 2026, aboard Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket, targeting NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory with a mandate to push the aging gamma-ray telescope into a higher, stable…

  • NASA Awards Commercial Satellite Data Contracts to Eight New Providers

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    NASA has awarded contracts to eight commercial satellite data providers under its Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program, expanding the range of Earth observation data available to support scientific research and operational applications. The awards were issued under the CSDA On-Ramp 2 Multiple Award contract, a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) agreement with a cumulative ceiling value…

  • NASA OIG: Starliner Helium Leaks Still Unresolved at March 2026

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    Is Boeing Starliner’s Human-Rating Certification Still Out of Reach? As of March 2026, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft still has unresolved helium leaks and propulsion system failures — the same technical problems that grounded it after the two-astronaut Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission in 2024. A NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audit released June 30,…