Private spaceflight

Billionaire Jeff Bezos intends to build a private space station. It is expected to be almost as big as the International Space Station.

Boeing's new Starliner capsule ended up in the wrong orbit after lifting off on its first test flight on Dec. 20, a blow to the company's effort to launch astronauts for NASA next year.

The US Space Agency intends to resume its piloted flights to the International Space Station (ISS) in the first half of 2020, world agencies reported.

They cite a statement by NASA Chief James Bridenstein during a visit to a U.S. space company in Hawthorne, California.

Moon Express, a company planning to mine material on the moon, is "definitely" going to launch its first mission next year, and could have human colonies there within five years, Chairman Naveen Jain told CNBC on Thursday.

In January, the company said that it was targeting a date in late 2017 to send its lander to the moon. But that has been pushed back until 2018.

The American company Lockheed Martin will take over the construction of a prototype residential unit for an orbital station above the moon, Mediapool announced.

Virgin Galactic's new spaceship has made a successful first glide flight, a key step after a deadly crash of its predecessor two years ago, the spaceflight company said on Dec. 3.

The new SpaceShipTwo, dubbed VSS Unity, was hoisted aloft by carrier airplane WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, the company said on Twitter.

Sierra Nevada Corp., owned by two Turkish entrepreneurs, will conduct a minimum of six cargo delivery missions to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under a contract it won from NASA, according to a statement released on Jan. 14. The missions will use SNC's Dream Chaser Cargo System.

The United States Congress has adopted a new law which allows businesses and industries to extract natural resources from celestial bodies.

The legislation "lets entreprenauts keep whatever nonliving souvenirs they find out in the void, opening the door to everything from asteroid-based gold mines to comet-collected rocket fuel," according to an article published by Wired magazine.

The TRJet program to build Turkey?s first indigenous regional jet faces problems as the U.S.-based Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), a partner in the jet program, has been asked to produce at least 70 percent of the jet?s parts in Turkey by the Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry (SSM), according to company representatives, noting that a final agreement has been not inked yet. 

NASA has extended a contract with Russia's space agency for $490 million to carry US astronauts to the International Space Station amid a lack of Congressional funding, the US agency said on August 5.