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&This week at Starbase while various construction projects continue at the usual rapid pace, crews begin scrapping Booster 17, test article B18.1 undergoes another round of cryo testing at the Massey Outpost and the Pad 1 launch mount practically disappears right before our eyes. Meanwhile in Florida, SpaceX launches 4 separate Starlink missions, ULA launches the ViaSat-3 F2 satellite aboard an Atlas V, and Blue Origin launches their second New Glenn mission to send a pair of Satellites to Mars.nbsp;SpaceX's Gigabay Begins to Take Form - Spaceflight Weekly #193 | 12:09 LabPadre Space | 250K subscribers | 12,200 views |...

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck breaks down the company's latest space projects and what's next on 'Making Money.' Rocket Lab CEO reveals two 'BIG' opportunities for humanity | 5:27 Fox Business | 3.24M subscribers | 9,348 views | November 12, 2025

An Atlas V 551 rocket, configured with five side-mounted solid rocket boosters and a standard-length payload fairing, will utilize several launch optimization features to place the ViaSat-3 Flight 2 spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The craft is one of the heaviest single-satellite payloads. Liftoff will occur from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Launch Readiness Review completed The Launch Readiness Review (LRR) is GO for Wednesday’s liftoff of the United Launch Alliance commercial Atlas V rocket with one of the most sophisticated and powerful commercial communications satellites — the ViaSat-3 Flight 2 ultra-high-capacity broadband spacecraft....

This week at Starbase, construction continues on Giga Bay and the Flight 12 vehicles at the build site, work continues on the Pad 2 launch mount and launch tower hardware, and teams aren't wasting any time demolishing the Pad 1 launch mount and reconfiguring the supporting infrastructure. Meanwhile in Florida, SpaceX launches another pair of Starlink missions as Blue Origin, Stoke Space, and ULA are all hard at work preparing infrastructure and vehicles for upcoming operations. 2026 Is Going To Be An Incredible Year For Starship - Spaceflight Weekly #191 | 10:16 LabPadre Space | 249K subscribers | 13,984 views...

SpaceX is preparing to launch the 11th integrated test flight of its Starship-Super Heavy rocket from Starbase, Texas. It's targeting liftoff of the Starship Flight 11 mission from Pad A no earlier than Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, with a launch window that opens at 6:15 p.m. CDT (7:15 p.m. EDT / 2315 UTC). SpaceX will reuse the Super Heavy booster, Booster 15, which will fly for a second time. The Starship upper stage, Ship 38, will be the final time SpaceX launches a Block 2 iteration of Starship. SpaceX prepares to transition to Starship Version 3 following Flight 11 |...

[snip] In fact, I saw someone who actually worked on the Sierra Space Dreamchaser comment about this. I wanted to interview him, but right now he's working for SpaceX, which means he can't do interviews. But he wrote, "I spent years tiling this ship, drilling composites and making every detail perfect. Management was a disaster and even tried to convince us they were on par with SpaceX. Now that I work on Starship, comments like that sound even more childish than before. RIP Chaser never to be." [/snip] NASA May Have Put the Nail in the Coffin for Sierra Space...

Watch live coverage of the launch of an Atlas 5 rocket with the first 27 operational satellites for Amazon's Kuiper internet service on Monday, April 28, 2025. Liftoff is anticipated at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 UTC), which is the opening of a two-hour launch window. Watch live: ULA Atlas 5 launches with 27 Kuiper satellites for Amazon's Starlink rival | launches about 7 pm LIVE (no duration shown) | Spaceflight Now | 360K subscribers | circa 1900 watching now | Started streaming 17 minutes ago[Firefly had to scrub yesterday, they were going to launch a Lockheed sat that was described...

Venezuela’s Tarek El-Aissami The Americas Report | Oct 03, 2008  By Nicole Ferrand [...] Mr. El - Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden." Tarek's great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and...

Sierra Nevada is emerging as the likely front runner to use the former NASA X-34 reusable launch vehicle demonstrator as a flying testbed for its Dream Chaser orbital space vehicle. The two surviving Orbital Sciences-built X-34s were moved by road to Mojave, Calif., on Nov. 16 from Edwards AFB, Calif., where they had been in storage since the program was canceled in 2001. The two 58.3-ft. vehicles, now stored inside a hangar belonging to the National Test Pilots School, were developed under a NASA program begun in 1996 to provide a low-cost advanced technology flight demonstration testbed vehicle for space...

Hours before the heat rose in the Mojave Desert of Southern California on Aug. 2 the Dream Chaser rolled out of a hangar at dawn as teams prepared to pull the flight vehicle through a series of 60 mph ground tow tests.View: Bonus Photos of the Day: Dream Chaser Takes on Ground Tests These tests were the fourth of incremental range and taxi tow tests that Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) performed to prove the spacecraft's braking and landing systems could handle upcoming captive-carry and approach-and-landing tests at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.The tests were performed in preparation for pre-negotiated, paid-for-performance...

Founded in 2002, SpaceX makes its cargo capsules and rockets at a sprawling facility in Hawthorne that was once used to assemble fuselage sections for Boeing 747s. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has successfully carried out two cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station for NASA. It is the only commercial company to do so. It was founded by Los Angeles billionaire Elon Musk, who earlier this week laid out plans for his Hyperloop transportation system to much fanfare. The design aims to take travelers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 35 minutes....

For the past ten years, the Sierra Nevada Corporation and NASA have been developing and testing this next-generation space vehicle. When it is ready, this vehicle will not only provide a more cost-effective way of servicing the ISS, it will also help restore domestic launch capability to the United States. On Saturday, November 11th, the Dream Chaser passed an important milestone by conducting a successful free flight test. This took place at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and verified the spaceplane’s ability to glide and land autonomously. This, in addition to verifying several key avionic and flight systems, is...

SNC was one of three companies, along with incumbents SpaceX and Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems), to receive CRS-2 contracts from NASA in January 2016. Each company is guaranteed at least six missions to the ISS under the contracts. To carry out the missions, SNC proposed a cargo version of the Dream Chaser spacecraft it had been developing for NASA’s commercial crew program. Although the vehicle was not selected by NASA when it awarded contracts instead to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014, SNC adapted the design with foldable wings, allowing it to fit within many existing payload fairings,...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., May 4 (UPI) -- The Dream Chaser spaceplane, a cargo spacecraft built and operated by Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp., is to begin launching and landing in Florida in 2022, NASA and the company announced Tuesday. The uncrewed, robotic spaceplane will be launched aboard a United Launch Alliance rocket from Kennedy Space Center for flights to the International Space Station. Once it docks and delivers cargo, Dream Chaser will return to the space center's former space shuttle landing strip. The first Dream Chaser is being prepared for delivery to the space center next spring, Janet Kavandi, a...

As soon as 2023, the United States military could have a new spacecraft to transport troops to space and low Earth orbit locations anywhere in the world within three hours. Colorado-based aerospace company Sierra Space announced Sept. 8, 2022 that it signed a research and development contract with the U.S. Transportation Command to develop options to transport military crews and cargo around the world using the “Dream Chaser” space plane. The Dream Chaser space plane is a 7-passenger winged shuttle-like plane that launches to space on a rocket and flies back to Earth, landing on a runway. It’s designed to...

Research conducted by Dr. Gwen Robbins, an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Appalachian State University, finds there is no evidence of cannibalism among the 84 members of the Donner Party who were trapped by a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the mid-1840s. Remains from the Donner party’s Alder Creek campsite were excavated by a team of archaeologists from the University of Montana and the University of Oregon Museum. A sample of bones from the campsite hearth was analyzed by Robbins and Kelsey Gray, an Appalachian graduate. They will present the results of this project this week at...

The mission will be automated and unmanned, but if all goes well Sierra Nevada hopes to have a human flight by sometime in 2017.

The orbital airframe structure for the first commercial Dream Chaser mini-shuttle that will launch to Earth orbit just over two years from now has been unveiled by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and program partner Lockheed Martin. Sierra Nevada is moving forward with plans for Dream Chaser’s first launch and unmanned orbital test flight in November 2016 atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The winged Dream Chaser is being developed under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program aimed at restoring America’s indigenous human spaceflight access to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station (ISS).

Sierra Nevada Corporation was looking to make the hiring push over the course of a year. Most positions will be in Colorado, she said, but many positions, including administrative staff and some technical and engineering positions, will be in the Reno-Sparks area. ... The company is growing thanks to several new government and commercial contracts it has received this year, she explained, citing a new contract to resupply the International Space Station starting in 2019. Sierra Nevada Corp. received several contracts to provide hardware for NASA's 2020 Mars mission, according to a statement from the company released earlier this month.

In a statement, SNC said that NASA concluded that the Nov. 11 free flight of the Dream Chaser engineering test article, at Edwards Air Force Base in California, met or exceeded all the requirements of the company’s last remaining funded milestone in its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) award from 2012. During the flight test, the Dream Chaser was released from a helicopter at an altitude of about 3,750 meters and glided to an autonomous runway landing 60 seconds later, reaching a top speed of 530 kilometers per hour during its descent. ... The milestone, formally known as Milestone 4B, was...