At its re:Mars conference, Amazon today announced that it quietly sent one of its AWS Snowcone edge computing and storage devices into space on the Axiom mission to the International Space Station. For the most part, this was an off-the-shelf Snowcone, which AWS already built to be rugged enough to…
Slingshot Aerospace scores $25M Space Force contract to build ‘digital twin’ space simulator
Space simulation and analytics company Slingshot Aerospace has been awarded a $25.2 million, 39-month contract by the U.S. Space Force (USSF) to further develop and deliver two of its products: Digital Space Twin and Slingshot Laboratory. The contract was funded by Space Systems Command and the USS…
US Space Force partners with VC firm Embedded Ventures under new R&D agreement
The space industry used to be dominated by a single player: the U.S. government, which contracted out services to a handful of very large aerospace primes and put their tech to use in long-term, centrally managed programs. Things have rapidly evolved since. Due to an explosive technological acceler…
US Space Force awards $87.5M to Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA for next-gen rocket testing
The U.S. Space Force, the military branch spun out of the Air Force in December 2019, has announced its next batch of awards for projects related to next-gen rocket engine testing and upper-stage improvements. The awards were granted by the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), a program managed by t…
Astra given regulatory green light for its first commercial orbital launch at the end of the month
Rocket launch startup Astra has received a key license from the Federal Aviation Administration, giving the green light for the company’s first commercial orbital launch at the end of the month. Astra CEO Chris Kemp tweeted the news on Thursday, adding that the launch operator license through the F…
Astra targets first commercial orbital launch for August 27
Astra’s last test launch went better than expected, nearly achieving orbit — kind of a stretch goal for that specific mission. The company at the time said that it would only need to tweak software to reach an orbital destination, and now we know when it’s going to get the chance to pro…
Rocket Lab returns to flight after failed May mission with successful launch for US Space Force
The launch, which took off from the company's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, was an important one to get right: It delivered a satellite for the U.S. Space Force to low Earth orbit.