news.buyenne.com

Enlarge / New Shepard on the launch pad the morning of Mission 8, April 29, 2018. (credit: Blue Origin)

This week NASA formally asked the US space industry to dish the details on its plans for brief spaceflights. In essence, the space agency said it wants to buy rides for its astronaut corps and scientists for brief hops into space but needs more information.

The agency was deliberately vague in its solicitation for "suborbital crew transportation services." In a discussion with reporters, the new program manager, Scott Colloredo, said, "We really want to hear what industry has to tell us." He indicated that the solicitation was wide open, with NASA seeking input from established companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, to companies such as Space Perspective that want to take people a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface.

However, in an interview with Ars, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the program seeks mostly to increase the time NASA spends in microgravity. "What we’re trying to do is provide access to a resource that historically has been very limited," he said.

Enlarge / An artist's concept of a Terran 1 rocket launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (credit: Relativity Space)

Relativity Space says it has reached an agreement with Iridium to launch six of the company's next-generation communications satellites.

Each of the Iridium NEXT satellites, which weigh 850kg, will be launched individually on Relativity's Terran 1 rocket. This means the new Launch Services Agreement will lead to as many as six Terran 1 missions, beginning no earlier than 2023.

This is the fifth launch-service agreement for Relativity, said Tim Ellis, co-founder of the California-based company. "This agreement represents yet another blue chip company to sign up with Relativity," Ellis said. It demonstrates that the Terran 1, with a potential lift capacity of 1.25 tons to low Earth orbit, fills a "unique" need in the launch market, he said.

Enlarge / The newer SMR-equipped small drives remain “Red”—while the CMR models will all become “Red Plus.” (credit: Western Digital)

Update 5:08pm ET: Pricing
Ars asked a senior Western Digital executive about pricing on the new Red and Red Plus lines. The initial answer given was "in general, we expect WD Red drives will be priced below WD Red Plus drives." When asked to comment on how prices of the existing EFRX and EFAX models will shift in order to make Red less expensive than Red Plus, the only response was "I can only comment on the [preceding] at this time," followed by "WD Red Plus will be available in August time period."

Original story 7:34am ET
Last night, a Western Digital executive reached out to Ars to let us know of a blog post concerning their controversial Red drives.

The company is taking a new branding initiative to clarify the technology used in its NAS drives—in the near future, "WD Red" will exclusively mean disks using Shingled Magnetic Recording technology, and "WD Red Plus" will mean disks using Conventional Magnetic Recording.