Lockheed Martin – Spaceflight Now

Lockheed Martin joins collaboration with Firefly Aerospace and Seagate for off-shore launches

May 4, 2026 Will Robinson-Smith

The announcement comes ahead of Firefly Aerospace’s first quarter earnings call for investors. A timeline for the first ocean-based Alpha rocket launches wasn’t announced.

Space Development Agency awards roughly $3.5 billion to 4 companies for 72 missile tracking and warning satellites

December 20, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

This batch of satellites will populate what the SDA calls the Tracking Layer of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation in low Earth orbit. The work will be divided evenly, with each company building 18 spacecraft.

U.S. Space Force, Lockheed Martin launch newest GPS satellite on SpaceX Falcon rocket

May 30, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The mission represented a short turnaround time for a national security mission, launching just three months after getting the call up from the government. Liftoff occurred at 1:37 p.m. EDT (1737 UTC).

Alpha rocket anomaly prevents deployment of Lockheed Martin tech demo satellite

April 26, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

The rocket, designated FLTA006 by Firefly Aerospace, carried a technology demonstration for Lockheed Martin’s LM400 Technology Demonstration (Tech Demo) satellite bus. The mission, dubbed ‘Message in a Booster,’ lifted off at the beginning of the Tuesday launch window at 6:37 a.m. PDT (9:37 a.m. EDT, 1337 UTC).

NASA leaders, Artemis contractors argue importance of architecture continuity for returning to the Moon

February 7, 2025 Will Robinson-Smith

Representatives from NASA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin argued that the United States shouldn’t skip past the Moon in favor of Mars when it comes to crewed deep space exploration. The discussion came up during a panel at the SpaceCom conference concerning the forthcoming Artemis 2 mission.

Firefly Aerospace announces contract with L3Harris for up to 20 launches on Alpha rocket

August 7, 2024 Will Robinson-Smith

The deal comes roughly two months after Firefly inked a deal with Lockheed Martin for up to 25 launches in a similar timeframe. The first Alpha launches under this new contract would launch no earlier than 2027.

NASA awards Blue Origin $3.4 billion Artemis moon lander contract

May 19, 2023 William Harwood

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.

NASA blames recent Hubble woes on aging hardware

March 31, 2021 Stephen Clark

Hardware problems that cropped up earlier this month on the Hubble Space Telescope, now approaching the 31st anniversary of its launch, are the latest signs the observatory is showing its age.

U.S. Space Force’s next missile warning satellite arrives at Florida launch base

March 26, 2021 Stephen Clark

A billion-dollar missile warning satellite built by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Space Force arrived at Cape Canaveral earlier this month to kick off final preparations for launch May 17 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter camera spots Perseverance rover after landing

March 5, 2021 Stephen Clark

A high-resolution camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the Perseverance rover after landing on the Red Planet last month, showing the nuclear-powered robot sitting on the Martian surface with its supersonic parachute and other landing system components scattered nearby.