NewSpace Journal

CRuSR makes its first awards

Armadillo Aerospace's Scorpius vehicle on a flight as part of the Lunar Lander Challenge in September 2009.

On Monday NASA announced that it has made $475,000 in awards to Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems for experimental flights of suborbital reusable vehicles. These are the first contracts for test flights under the agency’s Commercial Reusable [...]

Spaceport America update, a gubernatorial visit to MARS

County commissioners in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, approved earlier this week a plan to pave a road to Spaceport America. The paving will be paid by the spaceport project, although the county is contributing the equivalent of $200,000 in engineering and surveying services for the project, which will pave an existing road to cut [...]

Virgin: Irish article “entirely inaccurate”

Virgin Galactic has responded to yesterday’s report that the company is only accepting US citizens for its flights by, in effect, saying the article is completely off base. The Irish Independent article claimed that an Irishman living in England, Cyril Bennis, had been told by the company that it was currently only accepting US citizens. A [...]

Weekend roundup

Is Virgin Galactic only accepting US citizens now? That’s the claim of an article Sunday in the Irish Independent, which reports that an Irishman living in England “received a legal notice from Virgin Galactic stating that at present only US citizens can be considered for inclusion.” The company has signed up and accepted deposits [...]

WhiteKnightTwo landing gear collapses

WhiteKnightTwo in flight over Las Cruces airport in June 2009. The landing gear is partially extended during this overflight.

The AP reported late today that part of the landing gear for Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft collapsed upon landing at the end of a test flight today at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. An [...]

A brief Virgin (and TSC) update

Enrico Palermo of Virgin Galactic discusses the company's development of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo at the NewSpace 2010 conference on Saturday.

At the end of Saturday’s sessions at the NewSpace 2010 conference in Silicon Valley, Enrico Palermo, project engineering manager for Virgin Galactic, gave a brief update on the company’s activities. There weren’t any new announcements [...]

Space Adventures suborbital and orbital update

Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures, updates NewSpace 2010 attendees on his company's suborbital and orbital spaceflight plans.

Two months ago, at the International Space Development Conference in Chicago, Space Adventures announced a partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to develop vehicles for suborbital space tourism. At the end Friday of the first day of the NewSpace [...]

Farewell, Rocketplane

Rocketplane Global has been barely hanging on the last couple of years since its orbital counterpart, Rocketplane Global, lost its NASA COTS award and the financial crisis dried up the investment market. The company, in particular vice president Chuck Lauer, has been out there trying to drum up support for a variety of opportunities, from [...]

Space Tourists: a second look

Earlier this week I got to see the film Space Tourists during a screening as part of the AFI Silverdocs film festival in Silver Spring, Maryland. This film has been out for some time but has been limited to the film festival circuit; it first appeared in the US at Sundance earlier this year and [...]

Engine restarts are all the rage now

Armadillo's Mod vehicle descends under a drogue chute for several seconds before relighting its engine, in this screen capture from an Armadillo Aerospace video of Saturday's flight.

First it was Masten Space Systems, who last month demonstrated an in-flight engine relight on their Xombie vehicle, and now it’s Armadillo Aerospace’s turn. On Saturday Armadillo flew [...]