The X-Prize Foundation, has been established to find private benefactors, to provide $10 million funding to award to the first private team, to build a re-useable space craft to carry three people on a sub-orbital space-flight, "...doing for space what the Orteig Prize, "won by Lindbergh" did for aviation", say the organisers. The X Prize will be launched in St Louis, Missouri on 18 May.
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.
