Enabling Technologies

Astrobotic’s lunar delivery service set to launch in 2020

Lunar logistics startup Astrobotic is hoping to become the world’s first lunar delivery service. The company, spun out of a project at Carnegie Mellon University, was launched about a decade ago in order to participate in the Google Lunar XPrize. “Our goal is to make the moon accessible to the world,” John Thornton, Astrobotic’s CEO, told The Downlink. “We are building a DHL delivery service to take payloads from all
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Exos gears up for test flight of SARGE

Exos Aerospace Systems and Technologies is angling to make its debut in the suborbital launch market. The company has spent the past decade and $14 million to build a reusable suborbital launch vehicle, dubbed SARGE: Suborbital Autonomous Rocket with Guidance. SARGE has passed a number of testing milestones, and the company is now gearing up for its first flight test from Spaceport America in May. The Exos vehicle’s provenance is
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Blue Origin’s BE-4 could propel the next stage of space exploration

After five years of development, Jeff Bezos announced in Twitter this week Blue Origin has successfully completed a hot fire test of its fully reusable BE-4 engine. The hot fire test marks an important milestone for both Blue Origin and the next step in human exploration of space. https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/921114359119560704 Blue Origin's orbital rocket, the New Glenn, will use seven BE-4 engines in its first stage, and a single BE-4 in
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‘Lunar. Sooner’: ULA & Bigelow propose 2022 launch for lunar depot

Bigelow Aerospace and ULA have announced plans to put Bigelow’s B330 expandable habitat module into low lunar orbit by the end of 2022. Bigelow said the habitat will serve as a lunar depot and support infrastructure for other deep space missions. The commercial habitat will launch on ULA’s latest Vulcan rocket. The announcement expands an earlier partnership to launch one of Bigelow's B330 habitats into low Earth orbit aboard ULA's
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Aerospace firms tout solar electric propulsion to Congress

A handful of private firms submitted testimony to Congress touting the potential uses of solar electric propulsion at a hearing on in-space propulsion held last week by the U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on space. SEP systems could replace chemical propulsion for use in deep space exploration, but experts say the technology needs more improvement to become a viable propulsion option. “We are on the cusp of a giant leap
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On-orbit satellite maintenance ‘will change the space system paradigm’

NASA, DARPA, and others are developing technologies to support autonomous refueling and maintenance capabilities for satellites while they’re orbiting Earth, as part of a wider ambition to advance autonomous servicing capabilities that’ll enable a new era of infrastructure building in space. On-orbit satellite servicing will help extend the mission lives of satellites, but the technology that’s being developed to do so will help usher in a new era of space
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Brane Craft, the ‘nearly 2-dimensional’ solution to space debris, gets more NASA funding

Aerospace Corp’s senior nanotechnology scientist Dr. Siegfried Janson has designed a nearly two-dimensional spacecraft that could be used to removed dead satellites and other space debris from orbit. The Brane Craft proposal was one of 13 designs chosen by NASA last year to receive a $100,000 Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant. This week, Janson’s project was chosen to for another $500,000 in phase II funding to fund another two years
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Lockheed Martin partners with NASA on telescope instruments to study dark energy, furthest reaches of space

Lockheed Martin is building tools to help NASA with  the hunt for data and more direct evidence of dark energy, the force physicists believe to be behind the universe’s accelerating expansion. The aerospace giant is developing a system of instruments that, if selected for production, will comprise the core tools installed on the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which aims not only to reveal hundreds of millions more stars, but to help study
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