#WASHINGTON — Earth imaging and analytics company #BlackSky won a $3.5 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to supply satellite imagery and analysis in support of “global moving target engagement,” the Air Force said March 8.

This award comes on the heels of a research contract last year, and a $2 million award announced March 4 to supply the Air Force #satellite imagery data and access to the BlackSky data analytics platform. Under the $2 million contract, the #AFRL will use the data for studies and to help train artificial intelligence models focused on detecting and tracking moving objects and targets from space.

#WASHINGTON — #Rocket propulsion startup Ursa Major announced March 9 its Hadley engine successfully flew for the first time powering a Stratolaunch #hypersonic test vehicle.

Stratolaunch operates a giant aircraft — a modified version of a double-fuselage Boeing 747-400 — that serves as a mobile launchpad. It carries hypersonic vehicles underneath its center wing until reaching the desired altitude. This allows hypersonic vehicles to reach higher speeds before ignition and avoids the complexities of ground launching

The March 9 test off the coast of California, over the Pacific Ocean, was the first powered flight of Stratolaunch’s Talon hypersonic test vehicle. The company said the vehicle reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.

#WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch conducted the first powered flight of its Talon vehicle March 9, reaching “high supersonic” speeds in the uncrewed test.

The Talon-A vehicle, designated TA-1, took off attached to the company’s Roc aircraft from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 10:17 a.m. Eastern according to flight tracking data. The plane flew west to a location in the Pacific off the central California coast, where it released TA-1 at an unspecified time. Roc returned to Mojave more than four hours after takeoff.

#Stratolaunch executives said in a call with reporters that they could not disclose the top speed or altitude of the TA-1 on its flight, citing “proprietary agreements” with unspecified customers. They were, though, satisfied with the flight.

#WASHINGTON — The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has slipped from late April to early May because of International Space Station schedule conflicts and not due to any issues with the spacecraft itself.

In a media advisory released by #NASA late March 8, the agency said the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously scheduled to launch no earlier than April 22, was now scheduled for early March. The agency said the slip was “due to space station scheduling” but did not elaborate.

At recent briefings, #NASA managers said the key factor in the schedule for CFT was other missions to the station. “What we’ve been doing is watching how we progress with the Crew-8 launch and the CRS-30 mission,” said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, in a briefing after the March 3 launch of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission to the #ISS.

#WASHINGTON — Blue Origin expects to launch the first version of its Blue Moon lunar lander, a precursor to a future crewed lunar lander it is developing for #NASA, in 2025.

In an interview on the #CBS News program “60 Minutes” broadcast March 3, John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said the company was planning to launch the first “Mark 1” version of its Blue Moon lander in as soon as a year.

“This lander, we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 to 16 months from today,” he said, referring to a full-sized mockup of the lander behind him. “That is what our team is aiming towards.”

#TAMPA, Fla. — U.S.-based Slingshot Aerospace is opening offices in the United Kingdom to expand its space traffic coordination and analysis business globally.

Melissa Quinn, previously head of the company’s Seradata space data analysis team, will lead the new international business division out of the Space Systems Operations Facility at Spaceport Cornwall, in southwest England.

Quinn joined Slingshot in June after two and a half years as head of Spaceport Cornwall, a space business cluster that also provided the runway for Virgin Orbit’s failed launch from the U.K. in January 2023

#WASHINGTON — Kurs Orbital, an Italian startup developing technology for in-space satellite servicing, announced March 7 it has secured $4 million in seed funding.

Based in Turin, Italy, Kurs was co-founded in 2021 by former director of Ukraine’s space agency Volodymyr Usov. The company relocated to Italy in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine and set up operations at the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Center.

The funding round was led by the European firm OTB Ventures. Other participants include Credo Ventures, Galaxia, In-Q-Tel and Inovo.

Usov, who is Kurs’ chief executive, said the seed funds will help to accelerate the development and commercialization of an interface module, called ARCap, that Kurs designed to facilitate in-orbit docking and maneuvers known as rendezvous and proximity operations.

#WASHINGTON — SpaceX is planning a more ambitious set of in-flight tests of its Starship vehicle on its next launch to demonstrate capabilities needed for launching satellites and going to the moon.

SpaceX said March 6 it was projecting a launch of Starship/Super Heavy vehicle on its third integrated test flight as soon as March 14. The company noted that date is pending regulatory approvals, although officials with the Federal Aviation Administration, which closed Feb. 26 the investigation into the second flight, said last month they expected to have an updated license ready in time to support a mid-March launch. #spacenews

#WASHINGTON — As NASA’s planetary science programs face reduced budgets this year and uncertain prospects for next year, advocates in Congress are banding together to build up support for them.

Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) announced March 6 that they were restarting a Planetary Science Caucus in Congress, serving as its co-chairs, with more than a dozen other members. The goal of the caucus is to educate other members and the public on the benefits of space exploration, in particular planetary science missions and related research.

#TYSONS, Va. — Despite #Russia’s troubles on the battlefield in #Ukraine and its relative decline as a space power, the head of United States Space Command warned against underestimating Moscow’s capabilities and intentions to challenge America’s dominance in the space domain.

“Russia’s struggles following their invasion of #Ukraine should not create a false sense of confidence that Moscow is fading in the space domain,” Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, said March 5 in remarks at the Potomac Officers Club 2024 Space Summit.

Whiting, who is responsible for U.S. military space operations, did not mention recent U.S. intelligence reports alleging that Russia is developing a space-based nuclear weapon. But he noted that #Moscow “will remain a formidable and less predictable challenge to the United States in key areas over the next decade, while still facing many hurdles of its own making.”