I wanted to pass along some personal news: I’ve taken a position starting today with SpaceNews, as a senior writer there. I’ll be writing there on a lot about what you’ve seen here and elsewhere: space policy, commercial space, and related topics. It’s a great opportunity and I look forward to working with the excellent team there. With that good news,...

SpaceShipTwo approaches the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port in California after its most recent test flight on August 28, 2014. (credit: Jason DiVenere/Scaled Composites) Virgin Galactic flew SpaceShipTwo on Thursday, sending the suborbital vehicle on a glide flight above the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The purpose of the flight, according...

A Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5, carrying the AsiaSat 8 satellite. Another Falcon 9 launch of an AsiaSat satellite, planned for after midnight on Wednesday, has been postponed by one to two weeks. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX has postponed a Falcon 9 launch of an AsiaSat communications satellite that was scheduled...

A frame from a video aired by a local TV station showing the destruction of SpaceX’s F9R test vehicle after it suffered an in-flight anomaly on August 22, 2014. (credit: KWTX-TV) An experimental version of a Falcon 9 first stage used to test technologies for future reusable versions of that launch vehicle was destroyed during a flight Friday at SpaceX’s...

Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft approaches the International Space Station in this illustration. (credit: Boeing) Today was rumored to be one of the days that NASA would announce the winner or winners of contracts for the next phase of the agency’s commercial crew program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). Barring...

An illustration of Northrop Grumman’s XS-1 concept. (credit: Northrop Grumman) More than a month after DARPA formally announced the winners of Phase 1 contracts for its Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) program, the last of the three companies that received those contracts unveiled the design of the concept. In a press release Tuesday, Northrop Grumman...