Northrop Grumman
Every Cosmic Herald story on Northrop Grumman — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Commercial
SpaceX Marks the 600th Flight of a Reused Falcon Booster With a Pre-Dawn Starlink Launch
A pre-dawn Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral quietly notched a milestone that says more about SpaceX's operating model than any single mission: the 600th flight of a reused booster.
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Commercial
Katalyst's LINK Spacecraft Begins Checkouts Ahead of Historic Rescue Docking With NASA's Swift Observatory
Katalyst's LINK servicer is testing its xenon thrusters in orbit ahead of an unprecedented docking attempt meant to save NASA's decaying Swift Observatory from reentry.
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Commercial
A Rocket That's Flown Since 1990 Just Launched a Rescue Mission for a Dying NASA Telescope
A commercial spacecraft launched on what may be the last-ever Pegasus rocket to grapple NASA's decaying Swift Observatory and shove it into a safer orbit — a servicing job built and flown in just 10 months.
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Commercial
NASA's $30 Million Gambit to Save the Falling Swift Observatory
A commercial spacecraft built in nine months just launched to catch a decaying NASA telescope before it burns up — the first attempt ever to dock with a government satellite never designed for servicing.
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Commercial
China's Spark Space Bets on Electric-Pump Engines to Carve Out a Niche in the Small-Sat Launch Race
Two-year-old Hefei startup Spark Space has test-fired its Lieyan-2 kerosene-LOX engine and closed back-to-back funding rounds totaling over $14.8M, racing to debut its Jinhua-1 rocket by 2027.
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Commercial
Relativity Space Wants to Build a Mars Orbiter — And It's Not Waiting for NASA to Ask
Relativity Space announces plans to privately develop a Mars orbiter, signaling that commercial ambitions in deep space are no longer theoretical.
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Commercial
The first private module is going to the ISS. It's a down payment on something bigger.
Axiom Space is attaching a commercial module to the International Space Station — and it's designed to eventually detach and operate as an independent station after the ISS is decommissioned. The module going up now is the foundation for the first fully private orbital outpost.
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Commercial
Satellites are replaced when they run out of fuel. A nascent industry wants to refuel and repair them instead.
In-space servicing — refueling, repairing, and repositioning satellites — could extend the operational life of billion-dollar space assets by decades. Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicles have already done it commercially. The next generation aims to do it at scale.
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Commercial
A robot is about to grab an aging NASA telescope and push it higher
Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL will loft a Katalyst robotic spacecraft to boost the decaying orbit of NASA's Swift Observatory — a real-world test of commercial satellite servicing on a working science mission.
