Launch

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit will attempt to make it three in a row by launching a group of commercial and government satellites off the California coast on Wednesday afternoon.

The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) has chosen Arianespace to launch four new Galileo satellites for Europe’s own satellite navigation system. With this order, EUSPA takes over the role of placing launch services contracts for Galileo from ESA, which acted so far in the name and on behalf of the European Commission and will continue to be the technical authority for these launches.

et to launch on Dec. 22, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the largest space observatory in history, and it has an equally gargantuan task: to collect infrared light from the distant corners of the cosmos, enabling scientists to probe the structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

NASA will launch four Earth science missions in 2022 to provide scientists with more information about fundamental climate systems and processes including extreme storms, surface water and oceans, and atmospheric dust. Scientists will discuss the upcoming missions at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2021 Fall Meeting, hosted in New Orleans between Dec. 13 and 17.

Redwire Corporation (NYSE: RDW), a leader in space infrastructure for the next generation space economy, is launching four payloads on SpaceX’s 24th cargo resupply services (CRS) mission for NASA to the International Space Station (ISS) focused on advanced materials manufacturing and plant science experiments in low-Earth orbit.

Stratolaunch, LLC is pleased to announce a research contract with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The company plans to augment existing Department of Defense flight test resources through affordable, commercially contracted, rapid-turnaround hypersonic flight testing for the Department of Defense and its prime contractor partners.

SpaceX is targeting Thursday, December 9 for Falcon 9’s launch of NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission to low Earth orbit from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden has resumed its rocket activities after the fire that damaged the launch site in late August. Today, only three months after the incident, a sounding rocket was once again launched from the base.

KOUROU, French Guiana (ESA PR) — On Saturday 11 December, the James Webb Space Telescope was placed on top of the Ariane 5 rocket that will launch it to space from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the Space Test Program (STP)-3 mission for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command lifted off on Dec. 7 at 5:19 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. To date ULA has launched 147 times with 100 percent mission success.