The New Shepard space vehicle blasts off on its first developmental test flight over Blue Origin’s West Texas Launch Site April 29. The crew capsule reached apogee at 93,600 meters before beginning its descent back to Earth.

The U.S. Senate approved a bill Aug. 4 that extends two key provisions of commercial launch law as well as authorizes operations of the International Space Station beyond 2020, but the bill will have to be reconciled with a House bill that is more generous to industry.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...