SAN FRANCISCO SpaceX’s successful landing of a reusable rocket booster last month opens a new frontier for commercial space startups by offering tremendous cost savings and attracting venture capitalists who once shied away from spatial ventures. Space startup... More »
SHANGHAI China plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, marking another milestone in its ambitious space program, the official Xinhua news agency reported. China has launched a new round of work focused on lunar exploration, com... More »
Alcoa Inc said on Monday it had signed a $1.5 billion long-term contract with General Electric Co’s aviation unit to supply components used in aircraft engines. The aluminum producer will provide advanced nickel-based superalloy, titanium and aluminum componen... More »
STOCKHOLM Swedish home appliance maker Electrolux said on Monday its CEO Keith McLoughlin would retire and be replaced by senior executive Jonas Samuelson, just a month after the biggest deal in the company’s history collapsed. McLoughlin will hand over on Feb... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX will attempt to land its next Falcon 9 rocket on a barge in the Pacific Ocean, seeking another milestone a month after landing a booster on the ground in a spaceflight first, the company said on F... More »
DUBAI President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister on Thursday to expand Iran’s missile program, in defiance of a U.S. threat to impose sanctions over a ballistic missile test Iran carried out in October. Under a landmark agreement it clinched with wo... More »
CLARK FIELD, Philippines Philippine President Benigno Aquino vowed on Monday to leave behind a stronger and a more capable armed forces to face maritime challenges in the South China Sea when he leaves office next year. Aquino, ineligible to run for re-electio... More »
General Electric Co (GE.N) expects to announce a decision next month about whether it will move its headquarters out of Connecticut, a spokesman said on Sunday. GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt had previously said the U.S. conglomerate planned to decide the futu... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Sunday postponed launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket and an attempt to land the booster at the launch site, saying the tricky touchdown would have a better chance of success if delayed for 24 hours. A smooth landin... More »
WASHINGTON The Obama administration formally notified Congress on Wednesday of a $1.83-billion arms sale package for Taiwan, including two frigates, anti-tank missiles, amphibious assault vehicles and other equipment, drawing an angry response from China. The ... More »
SYDNEY Australia will not bow to Chinese pressure to halt surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea at the center of rival claims between China and some of its neighbors, Defense Minister Marise Payne said on Thursday. The Australian De... More »
SYDNEY Australian tax authorities on Thursday took the unprecedented step of publishing the records of hundreds of companies, including Google Inc (GOOGL.O) and Apple Inc APPL.O, which show they paid little or no tax on their in-country earnings. Of more than ... More »
STOCKHOLM Sweden’s Electrolux (ELUXb.ST) said on Monday its deal to buy General Electric’s (GE.N) appliance business had fallen through after GE terminated the $3.3 billion agreement. The U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court in July to stop Electro... More »
MOSCOW Russia will consider Afghanistan’s request for arms supply in a careful manner, but that task belongs first of all to the United States, RIA news agency cited Kremlin’s special envoy to Afghanistan as saying on Monday. Zamir Kabulov told the agency that... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Sunday, sending a long-awaited Orbital ATK cargo ship on its way to the International Space Station for NASA. The Atlas 5, built and flown by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnershi... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Rain and cloudy skies delayed Orbital ATK’s planned resumption on Thursday of cargo runs to the International Space Station, a year after the company’s Antares rocket exploded during launch. An Orbital Cygnus spacecraft, perched atop an At... More »
BERLIN A Vega rocket bearing a European prototype satellite blasted into space early on Thursday on a mission to search for ripples in space and across time, a phenomenon predicted but never proven by physicist Albert Einstein 100 years ago. The launch lit up ... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A Colorado-based startup developing a satellite network to predict weather using radio signals will launch its first two spacecraft on an Indian rocket, the company said on Thursday. Privately owned PlanetiQ signed a contract with Antrix C... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said on Tuesday his space transportation company, Blue Origin, plans about two more years of test flights before it will offer rides to passengers. On Monday, Blue Origin successfully landed a suborbital rocket ba... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Snapchat, maker of a free mobile app that lets users send videos and messages that disappear in seconds, is struggling to gain traction with advertisers, fuelling investor concern that its $16 billion valuation isn’t justified by a business that ... More »
NEW YORK For most of its 100-year history, when Boeing turned out more planes, employment soared and the Seattle-area economy prospered. When the rate of production fell, layoffs followed and the local economy crashed. The cycle was so predictable that Boeing ... More »
MOSCOWRussia and Iran have signed a contract for Moscow to supply Tehran with S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, Sergei Chemezov, the chief executive of Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying on Monday. ... More »
LONDONThe man who will become the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station said on Friday he hoped his mission would inspire young Britons to one day journey to Mars. Tim Peake, 43, a former army major, will blast off on a six-month mis... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.U.S. space agency NASA has dropped Boeing Co (BA.N) from a multibillion-dollar competition to fly cargo to the International Space Station and will delay selecting one or more winners for about two months, officials said on Thursday. Losing... More »
ST PETERSBURG The first bodies from a plane crash in Egypt in which all 224 passengers, most of them Russians, died over the weekend arrived in St Petersburg early on Monday morning aboard a Russian government plane. The crashed Airbus A321 plane, operated by ... More »
(This October 28 story has been corrected in 13th paragraph to fix 100 mph metric conversion to 160 kph from 60kph) By Joe McDonald and Phil Stewart EXCHANGE, Pa./WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A high-tech U.S. military blimp designed to detect a missile attack came l... More »
LONDON British broadband provider TalkTalk said on Sunday it had hired defense company BAE Systems to investigate a cyber attack that may have led to the theft of personal data from its more than 4 million customers. TalkTalk said on Friday it had received a r... More »
(In this version of the Oct. 13 story, first sentence of third paragraph, corrects to ‘upper-stage liquid oxygen tank’ from ‘upper-stage engine’. In second sentence of third paragraph, corrects to ‘causing the tank’ instead of ‘causing the engine’.) By Irene K... More »
MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet the United Nations’ special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, on Tuesday, RIA news agency quoted the ministry’s press department as saying. RIA said the information came in response to a question on wh... More »
WASHINGTON Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, has slammed a bid by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, to get a waiver from a U.S. ban on Russian rocket engines for military use. Elon Musk, the billionaire fou... More »
KABUL Police and residents said Afghan government forces had regained control of most of the besieged city of Kunduz on Monday, and some shops in the center of the provincial capital opened for the first time since it fell to Taliban fighters a week ago.Reside... More »
Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has accumulated $2.5 billion in General Electric (GE.N) shares since May — a roughly 1 percent stake — making it one of the company’s top 10 shareholders, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a white paper Trian plans to di... More »
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (RR.L) may announce a reduction of 400 management jobs in its marine division this week, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Chief Executive Warren East’s aim with the marine restructuring will be to s... More »
In a sign that what is old is new again, U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co is producing its own science fiction podcast series in an effort to raise its profile among a younger, tech-savvy audience. GE, in partnership with The Slate Group’s podcast network... More »
NEW DELHI India launched its first space research observatory and several U.S. satellites on Monday, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive to expand his country’s influence in the competitive, $300 billion global space industry. The observatory, named A... More »
BEIJING China and Russia are set to sign an agreement on developing a wide-bodied airliner before the end of the year, the China Daily reported on Monday, quoting the president of Russia’s state-controlled United Aircraft Corp, Yury Slyusar. United Aircraft an... More »
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. Boeing Co (BA.N) on Wednesday said it had rejected an unsolicited bid from Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc (AJRD.N) for United Launch Alliance, a 50-50 rocket launch venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N). “The unsolicited prop... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The first manned test flight of NASA’s new deep-space Orion capsule faces a likely two-year-year delay until 2023 due to development and budget concerns, officials with the U.S. space agency said on Wednesday. The capsule, along with its m... More »
MOBILE, Ala, Airbus Group NV (AIR.PA) threw a party for its new U.S. workers ahead of the formal opening Monday of its first commercial jet factory in the United States, and representatives of the machinists union joined the crowd. The International Associatio... More »
MOBILE, Ala. Airbus Group (AIR.PA) said on Sunday that its first U.S. factory, due to formally open on Monday, will be the most efficient in the world and will focus on building the largest version of the company’s single-aisle aircraft. The elegant, skylit fa... More »
WASHINGTON A senior Pentagon official on Friday expressed concerns about Aerojet Rocketdyne Holding Inc’s reported $2 billion bid for United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 rocket launch venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, and said the deal would req... More »
MARINETTE, Wis. Big investments, lean manufacturing techniques borrowed from the automotive industry, and a more engaged workforce have revamped the Wisconsin shipyard where Italy’s Fincantieri SpA builds the Freedom variant of the U.S. Navy’s coastal warships... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Boeing Co (BA.N) took the wraps off an assembly plant on Friday for its first line of commercial spaceships, which NASA plans to use to fly crews to the International Space Station, officials said. “This is a point in history that reflects... More »
ALMATY A Russian Soyuz spaceship safely delivered a three-man international crew, including Denmark’s first astronaut, to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, a day after having had to maneuver to avoid colliding with space debris. The Soyuz TMA-18... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A key instrument on a $1 billion NASA satellite has failed, reducing scientists’ ability to capture data to measure the moisture in Earth’s soil in order to improve flood forecasting and monitor climate change, officials said on Thursday. ... More »
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter awarded $75 million on Friday to help a consortium of high-tech firms and researchers develop electronic systems packed with sensors flexible enough to be worn by soldiers or molded onto the skin of a pla... More »
MELBOURNE, Fla. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, one of the first Americans to land on the moon, will spearhead a new research institute in Florida aimed at paving a path toward Mars exploration and settlement, officials said on Thursday. The Buzz Aldrin Space In... More »
BEIJING Boeing Co (BA.N) on Tuesday raised its forecast for China’s aircraft demand over the next 20 years despite a slowing economy and a tumbling stock market that have triggered a worldwide slide in equity and commodity prices. The U.S. plane maker expects ... More »
SEOUL North and South Korea agreed early on Tuesday to end a military standoff that sparked an exchange of artillery fire and had ratcheted up tension on one of the world’s most heavily-fortified borders. Under an accord reached in the early hours, following m... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James on Monday said a contract for a new long-range bomber would be awarded soon, and the project would not be considered a “new start” program that could be halted if Congress fails to pass a budget for fiscal 2016... More »
General Electric Co (GE.N) said on Monday it was cutting 262 more jobs at its Lufkin oil unit in Texas and closing a foundry as it grapples with the plunge in global oil prices. GE earlier this year said it planned to eliminate some 575 jobs from Lufkin, bring... More »
SEOUL His father was afraid to fly, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has taken to the skies, building a series of small runways long enough to land light, private aircraft next to some of his palaces, satellite imagery shows. Construction on Kim’s personal ... More »
BERLIN/FRANKFURT European scientists have revised their plans for the comet lander Philae and are now focusing on getting images and drill samples if communications are restored. After coming to rest in the shadows when it landed on a comet in November, Philae... More »
NEW YORK Growing pension obligations at Precision Castparts Corp (PCP.N), which Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to buy for $32 billion, highlight an issue that large U.S. corporations still face, almost a decade into a low-interest rate environment. Berkshire’s ... More »
MOSCOW A pair of Russian cosmonauts began their working week on Monday by cleaning the windows of the International Space Station (ISS), floating 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth’s surface. Station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Mikhail Kornie... More »
WASHINGTON A House panel this week asked NASA to explain why it hasn’t launched an independent review of the explosion on June 28 of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, as it did after the earlier explosion of Orbital ATK Inc’s Antares rocket on Oct. 28. Both launches w... More »
BERLIN/FRANKFURT The comet lander Philae may be uncommunicative at the moment, but the pictures and measurements it took after it touched down on a comet in November have shown scientists that the comet is covered with coarse material, rather than dust, and is... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla A faulty metal brace in an unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket likely triggered the explosion that destroyed the booster minutes after liftoff from Florida last month, company chief Elon Musk said on Monday. The June 28 accident, which destroye... More »
RAGLAN, New Zealand Deep in New Zealand’s dairying heartland, drone maker Aeronavics tests aircraft designed to corner the fast-growing emerging market for unmanned aerial vehicles in the film and television business. The developer of drones used in the produc... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is closing fast on an unexpectedly spotted Pluto, the most distant planetary body ever explored. From New Horizon’s position more than 3 billion miles (4.88 billion km) from Earth, radio signals, traveling at ... More »
PARIS An attempt by Airbus to make history by crossing the English Channel in an electric plane ended in wounded pride on Friday after a French pilot claimed to have beaten it by hours. In a further twist, a Slovenian businessman said he might have beaten both... More »
TORONTO BlackBerry Ltd (BB.TO), which has been coy about its ambitions to make a mainstream Android smartphone, fueled more speculation about its plans this week when it scooped up two Android-related domain names. Several blog posts in the last two days have ... More »
WASHINGTON A Falcon 9 rocket accident last month should not eliminate SpaceX from the competition to launch a new GPS satellite, U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah James said on Wednesday, since there would be “plenty of time” to test the rocket before any futur... More »
WASHINGTON Loss of U.S. Export-Import Bank financing would put Boeing Co (BA.N) at a “huge competitive disadvantage” since its rivals still have access to such financing support, the head of the company’s commercial aircraft division told reporters on Monday. ... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA said on Monday it expects the New Horizons spacecraft to be back in service on Tuesday after a computer crash over the weekend threatened its upcoming historic flyby of Pluto. Nearing the end of a 9-1/2-year journey to the solar syste... More »
LONDON A restored World War Two Spitfire which was shot down over northern France in 1940 is expected to raise about $3 million for charity when it goes up for auction in London next week. The wreckage of the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire Mk.1A was recovered in... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off on Friday to deliver a cargo ship loaded with food, water and equipment to the International Space Station, breaking a string of launch failures, a NASA TV broadcast showed. The Progress capsule, carrying... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla./WASHINGTON SpaceX can compete to launch a U.S. Global Positioning System satellite despite a Falcon 9 rocket accident this weekend, the Air Force said on Wednesday. “SpaceX remains certified and can compete for the upcoming GPS III launch ... More »
WASHINGTON The failure of a SpaceX rocket over Florida on Sunday should not lead U.S. officials back to Russia to look for a rocket engine that can get military equipment into space, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said on Monday. “This mi... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – An unmanned SpaceX rocket exploded about two minutes after liftoff from Florida on Sunday, destroying a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station in the latest in a string of mishaps in supplying the orbiting outpost. The 208-... More »
A clothing designer area is pictured at TechShop in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, California April 24, 2014. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith In the shadow of Internet monoliths such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, it’s easy to forget that Silico... More »
