The Australian Space Awards 2026, in partnership with Principal Partner Space Centre Australia, saw a confirmed total of 131 finalists across this year’s awards, which marks the seventh instalment of the national program celebrating excellence in Australia’s space industry.
The Airborne Science and Cosmology Enabling Telescope (ASCENT) program was formally introduced by Space Centre Australia LLC at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, where it will be based. At the heart of the program is a fleet of C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, modified to carry interchangeable telescopes and sensor payloads.
After a journey of more than a week, the Orion spacecraft splashed down safely off the coast of California on Saturday, carrying its four-person crew back from a historic lunar flyby. It was the first time astronauts have travelled beyond low Earth orbit since the Apollo era.
The spacecraft, known as ViaSat-3 Flight 3 (VS-3 F3), was built using Boeing’s high-power 702MP+ platform at the company’s facility in El Segundo, California. It is designed to deliver flexible, high-performance bandwidth to support a range of users, including commercial aviation.
Four astronauts were sent on a 10-day journey that will take them around the Moon and back to Earth, after launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Rocket Lab announced the agreement for a series of missions using its HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) vehicle, marking the largest single launch contract in the company’s history. HASTE was earlier this month used to launch a successful test flight of the Hypersonix DART AE aircraft.