Faculty and students of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) have completed the construction of a cubesat called KMUTNB Academic Challenge of Knowledge Satellite, also known as KnackSat. KnackSat, built in Thailand by undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. students under the …

A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H-2A satellite launch vehicle successfully lofted Japan’s latest Intelligence Gathering Satellite (IGS) reconnaissance satellite from the Tanegashima Space Center in the Southwest of Japan on Tuesday, 27 February, 2018. The IGS-Optical 6 satellite is one of several Japan has in orbit, including a number with …

The government of South Korea has approved the sale of high-resolution satellite imagery taken by Korean high-resolution Earth observation satellites. The Satrec Initiative, a local provider for earth observation, will sell the imagery, and it has already signed export deals with India and the Philippines. This approval was announced last …

China continues to move forward in its ongoing use of regional space and satellite deals to access the natural resources of other countries. As reported last week in The Sydney Morning Herald, China is amassing space-related contracts with countries in Central and South America, regions which have often lagged in space-related …

SpaceX successfully launched Spain’s high-resolution synthetic aperture radar  (SAR) PAZ reconnaissance satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, on Thursday, 22 February, 2018. The successful launch of PAZ is the latest by a Mediterranean country and intensifies the space-based surveillance and reconnaissance competition of the geopolitically important sea. The …

With growing geopolitical risk, a stricter regulatory environment, and new technologies such as Blockchain, how and where sovereign data is stored and accessed is an increasingly important issue for governments and companies. ThorGroup Chairman and President Dr. John B. Sheldon examines the security claims of new diplomatic and commercial concepts for storing sovereign data …

Israeli satellite communications and networks company Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. is expanding its presence to Central America through its new contract with Hispasat. This multi-million-dollar venture will provide commercial broadband services throughout Mexico using capacity on the Amazonas-5 High Throughput Satellite (HTS). Based in Israel, Gilat is a worldwide leader …

The tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan is to create its own space agency and will have its Bhutanese-built Cubesat – BHUTAN-1 – launched in 2018 from Japan. Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay announced that a space agency is to be created under the auspices of the Ministry of Information and …

Further details have emerged about the content of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the UAE Space Agency and the French space agency, the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES) on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in Dubai, on 12 February, 2018. The MoU was signed by H.E. Dr. …

China’s Space Silk Road, an offshoot of its much-vaunted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has captured the attention of the space sector’s trade media over the past few years, but while China’s ambitions are certainly newsworthy, another Northeast Asian country is quietly building a scientific, technical, and diplomatic space community …