All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
The Princess Anne facility is designed to support a national coalition that includes Firefly Aerospace to increase flight test cadence to one launch per week for the U.S. Navy and the Missile Defense Agency.
Three independent sources confirmed to European Spaceflight that Orbital Express Launch ApS dismissed its entire workforce.
Chen Dong received the Spaceflight Merit Medal (Third Class) and the honorary title of hero taikonaut in 2016.
Employees were told that talks between Orbex and The Exploration Company began in December 2025, according to a source who spoke to European Spaceflight.
Orbex approached the UK government for support but those efforts ultimately failed, according to a source who spoke to European Spaceflight.
An attempt to sell Orbex to a private consortium was unable to raise sufficient capital, according to a source who spoke to European Spaceflight.
Chen Zhongrui executed four spacewalks during the Shenzhou-20 mission and stayed on orbit for 204 days on his first spaceflight.
Firefly will retain its flight-proven Reaver and Lightning engines and its carbon composite structures as the core technology of the Alpha vehicle during the Block II upgrade.
Recent space IPOs have at times performed well initially and then declined due to lack of proof points, technical failures, or weak business momentum, with Firefly Aerospace offered as an example.
Volta Space Technologies has a LightPort Wireless Power Receiver manifested on Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 2, which is tentatively scheduled for Q4.
The contract tasks Comtech with supplying advanced electronic components and engineering services for next-generation human spaceflight missions targeting the lunar surface.
Firefly delivered the Alpha first stage to its launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base and is conducting final integration with the second stage and payload fairing ahead of the static fire and launch.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander is planned to deliver payloads to Mare Crisium as part of the 2026 CLPS manifest.
Block II consolidates batteries and avionics into an in-house system used across Firefly spacecraft and rockets to increase schedule, reliability, and production efficiencies, replacing off-the-shelf batteries and avionics.
Block II will increase Alpha’s length from approximately 97 feet to 104 feet with design optimizations for rapid manufacturing on Firefly’s Automated Fiber Placement machine and increased strength of all carbon composite structures.
Firefly Aerospace will implement a Block II configuration upgrade for the Alpha rocket focused on enhancing reliability, streamlining producibility, and improving launch operations to support commercial, civil, and national security mission demand.
Firefly aims for Block II upgrades to increase manufacturability through consolidated parts, key configuration updates, and stronger structures built with automated machinery.
Zhang Lu was born in November 1976, is from Hanshou County, Hunan province, was selected as part of China’s second taikonaut group in 2010, served in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, achieved the rank of Senior Colonel, joined the Communist Party of China in April 1999, and received the Spaceflight Merit Medal (Third Class) and the honorary title of hero taikonaut after Shenzhou-15.
Throughout the 1960s Caidin wrote primarily non-fiction books about airplanes and also expanded into fiction about spaceflight.
Zhang Lu is the Commander and Pilot of Shenzhou-21 on his second spaceflight and previously flew on Shenzhou-15 between November 2022 and June 2023.