Latest Spaceport Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez announced on Tuesday that SpaceX has signed a three-year agreement to use Spaceport America for flight testing. According to a Spaceport America statement, SpaceX will be leasing land and facilities at the New Mexico site to conduct the next phase of flight testing for its reusable rocket program. “I am thrilled that SpaceX has chosen to make New Mexico its home, bringing their revolutionary...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Orbital Sciences’ new Antares medium-class space launch vehicle is set for a launch today at 5:00 pm EDT, according to a company statement. The rocket, which was originally scheduled for lift-off on Wednesday April 17, is being launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, from Launch Pad 0A. Dubbed the A-ONE mission, the Antares rocket launch was...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Russia’s space industry has suffered yet another blow after a Zenit-3SL launch vehicle failed to deliver a US telecommunications satellite into orbit last night. The rocket, operated from a floating launch pad south of the Hawaiian Islands, failed 40 seconds after lift-off at 06:59 GMT and plunged back into the Pacific Ocean. The Russian rocket was carrying the Intelsat-27 telecommunications satellite, which was built by Boeing...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Officials from Virgin Galactic are reportedly threatening to pull their support from a $200-plus million, publicly financed spaceport in New Mexico unless an accident liability waver is extended to cover manufacturers and component suppliers. According to Edward Helmore of The Guardian, Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company has been displeased with state lawmakers failure to grant the extension. New Mexico legislators...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A Soyuz rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite has lifted off from a spaceport in French Guiana, officials from the Russian national space agency (Roscosmos) announced on Sunday. According to RIA Novosti reports, the Russian Soyuz ST-a carrier rocket and its payload, the multi-purpose European observation satellite Pleiades 1B, lifted off at 6:03 Moscow time on Sunday. The launch had been scheduled for Saturday morning,...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online In the 1989 film classic, Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella is told, "If you build it, they will come." The developers of Spaceport America have been depending on that idea. So far, it isn't working out. With a $209 billion dollar tax-payer funded price tag, Spaceport America is a rather large gamble for the New Mexico Space Authority (NMSA), the organization who designed, built and will operate the world's first private space...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Assure Space, LLC, a new space insurance agency for satellite risks, is excited to partner with Auster Capital Partners ("ACP") and Space Florida for the provision of launch and in-orbit insurance to satellite operators worldwide. Assure Space has agreements with participating insurers that grant it authority to act as their intermediary and perform a range of responsibilities on their behalf. These include identifying and evaluating...

MOJAVE, Calif. and NEW YORK, June 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With the Tom Sachs space-themed art exhibit, "Space Program: Mars" as a backdrop, XCOR Aerospace named Space Expedition Corporation (SXC) as the new General Sales Agent (GSA) for the XCOR owned Lynx Suborbital vehicle flying from the Mojave Air and Spaceport. SXC was previously announced as the first wet lease customer for a Lynx production vehicle with planned flights from Curacao. The GSA places the responsibility with SXC...

One of the U.S. companies looking to establish a private-sector space transportation system is considering building a personal airfield in southern Texas, according to an FAA document posted on Tuesday. According to Adi Robertson of The Verge, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) is said to be eyeing locations in Cameron County, located at the southern tip of the state, for the future home of a facility which could support as many as a dozen commercial launches each year....

[ Watch the Video ] Draper Laboratory has performed its first free-flight test of Masten Space Systems' "Xombie" rocket using the Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment System (GENIE), reports the Associated Press The rocket is being developed for a NASA program to help explore vertical landing systems for solar system exploration. The Xombie suborbital rocket hovered about 164 feet off the ground, and safely landed back onto the platform. Draper said the testing...