India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to lay the foundation stone for construction of the new facility on February 28th which will come up in an area of 2,233 acres in Padukkapathu, near Chennai in Tamul Nadu. India’s government has completed land acquisition for the ambitious project which will be built at a cost of […]
Europe already has one rival to its giant Ariane rocket in the form of the Vega mid-sized launcher. However, Vega is itself subject to delays caused by a failure at the end of 2022 and in any case is only good for lower weight or orbital tasks. Stephane Israel, chief executive of Arianespace, questioned the […]
Elon Musk addressed an ‘all hands’ staff Town Hall meeting at the SpaceX Starship site in south Texas on January 12th. He said that the “three Rs: Reliability, Reusable Rockets” were key to SpaceX’s success. Other news also emerged. Some mundane, others perhaps more important. The mundane was that there will be new restaurant, café […]
A complaint has been filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court by Craig Stoker, who was previously Blue Origin’s programme manager on their BE-4 rocket engine development, and alleging concerns over workplace safety at the Jeff Bezos-backed business. Stoker further alleges that Blue Origin had a “hostile work environment” and that there were “ethical violations” […]
Sir Richard Branson says he is not putting any more cash into the Virgin Galactic rocket space tourism venture. He told the FT that his business empire “does not have the deepest pockets” any more and that he had learned an expensive lesson with its Virgin Orbit business which went bust earlier in 2023. Virgin […]
Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-backed reusable rocket business, in addition to his Project Kuiper broadband scheme and its rocket tourism activity, is developing Blue Ring. It is described as a “multi-use platform for Earth orbit and beyond”. Blue Ring will be an orbiting platform that can host, deploy and re-fuel satellites. Blue Ring is a […]
Australia’s Southern Launch and the Koonibba Community Aboriginal Corp have combined for a new space launch facility at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. Planning consent has been granted for the development. Koonibba is about 586 kms northwest of state capital Adelaide. The Test Range was established in 2019 and is surrounded by an […]
Struggling rocket developer Astra Space is to conduct a 1-for-15 stock split and in the process raise around $65 million (€58.9m) to continue its work on its Rocket 4 launch vehicle. The 1-for-15 stock split will issue one new share to stockholders in a swap for 15 existing shares. The company’s filing with the SEC […]
A Las Vegas real estate developer wants to build a spaceport on 240 acres of near-desert scrub in Clark County. Rob Lauer, the developer, is seeking to raise $310 million (€284.4m) to build a launch pad, a runway for spaceplanes, a control tower and a flight-training school. Also in the plan is a 200-room hotel […]
A growing loss in trading is hardly surprising given that Virgin Galactic, the sub-orbital tourist rocket scheme, has been stuck on the ground these past two years. But that is about to change with a sub-orbital flight scheduled for late June (and a non-commercial flight due later in May) and following on from a successful […]