The Spaceport Florida Authority has been issued a licence by the US Office of Commercial Space Transportation to operate a second launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The organisation, a state agency created to boost commercial space enterprises, will charge $300,000 a launch to use the new pad or the recently refurbished Trident 2 missile Pad 46 at the Cape. This launch pad will be inaugurated with the flight of the NASA Lunar Prospector orbiter in September.
Source: Flight International
China’s AVIC has secured a contract from the China Manned Space Agency to develop a winged, reusable spacecraft called Haolong.
The UK Space Command’s first owned earth observation microsatellite has been launched, providing the inaugural element of a planned space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) constellation.
Orbital launch pioneer SpaceX is being contracted by the American space agency NASA to develop a so-called “US Deorbit Vehicle” that can safely return the International Space Station to Earth via controlled re-entry.
