I’m Anthony Colangelo.

Included in this round of 13 payloads selected for the Flight Opportunities program is PlanetVac from Honeybee Robotics, flying on a Masten lander. PlanetVac could be an incredible (and wonderfully simple) solution for a sample return mission.

NASA still seems to be somewhat confused in their public statements about what is the SLS’ second flight. The Europa missions have been mandated to fly on SLS no later than 2022, per the FY 2016 budget, but some NASA representatives keep saying EM-2 is on the docket for 2021.

A little bit of a bummer that this is an exclusive agreement, but Orbital ATK should do well with it. These next generation storable propellants are going to be a huge improvement in both performance and spacecraft processing.

Things are starting to heat up surrounding Blue Origin’s orbital plans, and I expect to hear more sometime soon—especially with the BE-4 nearing its full-up test. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Blue Origin enter the competition for the next round of NASA cargo and crew contracts.

Sad to see Nexø I plunge into the Baltic Sea, but they recovered the rocket successfully so it looks like they should get some good data out of this launch.

This kind of autonomy is going to be hugely beneficial, especially when you consider the signal delay between Earth and Mars which is between 4 and 24 minutes.

Robotic satellite servicing is going to be a very interesting (and huge) segment of the industry to watch.

Elon forgot to add “Build a rover for the Mars colony” to this list. After all, Bioweapon Defense Mode sounds like a pretty good thing to have on a planet filled with air that isn’t yet breathable.

A former resident talks about SpaceX’s plans for—and construction of—their own commercial spaceport near Brownsville, Texas. Pretty interesting to read about the social and economic collision that is happening straight from someone with great perspective on it. The new spaceport will be launching Falcon 9 and Heavy, and presumably the insanely huge Mars rocket—often called the Mars Colonial Transporter—that SpaceX is due to unveil in September.

Hidden in this article about the Mars 2020 budget is a piece about a potential sample return mission that I find particularly interesting.

A good bit of insight into the changes going on over at ULA that I had not heard before. I still have concerns about the roadmap to get Vulcan up and operating, but there are clearly some good strides being taken to get there.

The crowdfunded, nonprofit, amateur (in operation—not in spirit!) space program is preparing to launch the Nexø I rocket this weekend. They’re currently targeting Saturday, July 23rd.

Describing Spaceport America as “fully operational” isn’t untrue, but still somewhat of an overstatement.

Some interesting insight into SSL’s inner-workings, as well as some good follow-up on the discussion Logan and I had about chemical vs. electric satellites.

To me, Mars is where all the interesting discoveries live and our future awaits, but lunar missions are much better suited for a governmental space program—or at least for a governmental space program that is run like NASA has been run for decades.

Fantastic breakdown of the Mars 2020 rover CAD render by Lars Osborne. Touches on some changes from Curiosity, and new experiments and hardware—including the tiny helicopter and the sample return storage system.

A tug-of-war like this between ESA and the EU could have some harmful fallout, especially with tensions already high after the Brexit referendum.

NASA’s Resource Prospector mission is important. We have to learn how to live off the land if we want to go anywhere. The more people working on that problem, the better.

I’ve been harping on three things in particular as the most important aspects of SpaceX’s 2016 work: schedule certainty, flight rate, and reuse. Last night was filled with good signs for SpaceX’s future.