by Hamza Hameed and Brendan Rosseau On 30 May 2020, two American astronauts made history by taking part in the first crewed orbital flight ever operated by a private commercial launch service provider. The SpaceX Demo-2 launch marked an important moment in the development of a private space launch industry which has been growing steadily ever since the dawn of the space age, with Telstar-1, which was launched on 10 July 1962 as part of the first commercially sponsored space launch.

NASA is inviting additional teams to compete in the Cube Quest Challenge. You can still participate in the in-space phase of the challenge and be eligible to win part of a $4.5 million prize purse.

Space Perspective announced its plans to fly passengers and research payloads to the edge of space with its Spaceship Neptune, a high-performance balloon and pressurized capsule.

Educational Irish Research Satellite 1, or EIRSAT-1 for short, is being built by students and staff of University College Dublin, who are participating in ESA Education’s Fly Your Satellite! programme.

The UK’s space industry leader Airbus, has teamed with KBR, Leidos UK, Northrop Grumman, and QinetiQ to bring new thinking to future space solutions and to launch the Open Innovation

Exolaunch, a German rideshare launch and deployment solutions provider, confirmed that CarboNIX, its newly developed separation system, successfully deployed three Planet SkySats microsatellites into low Earth orbit on SpaceX’s ninth Starlink mission.

ALCAN Systems, a smart antenna startup from Germany, announced the start of its product development program to produce a fixed ground terminal with an electronically steerable flat-panel antenna for Low Earth orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellations that operate on Ka-Band frequencies.

The UN SDGs are an urgent universal call for action to change the world and steer it towards a better and more sustainable path. One goal is missing: the 18th SDG on sustainable use of outer space.

by Steven Freeland and Francois Lambert. Later this month, on 26 June, a flurry of companies will make their final bids to acquire OneWeb, Greg Wyler’s prised space start-up. The winning bidder could be a private company, perhaps backed by a major space power. Whoever is successful will have the opportunity to make a tremendous impact on the future ‘NewSpace’ model that is operating in a significant area of commercial competition – Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Airbus Defence and Space has won the next phase of the study contract (Advanced B2) from the European Space Agency (ESA) for the advanced Sample Fetch Rover which will be used to collect samples from the surface of Mars.