Dawn Aerospace, a New Zealand-Dutch startup building 100% reusable rockets for satellite delivery, has raised NZ$3.35 million (U.S.$2.24 million) of investment from Kiwi, American, and Dutch investors.

GomSpace has signed a 300,000 Euro (U.S.$341,000) development contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) for the initiation of a new GOMX-5 satellite mission to demonstrate new nanosatellite capabilities for the next generation of constellations requiring high speed communications links and high levels of manoeuvrability.

Researchers in Italy have demonstrated the feasibility of quantum communications between high-orbiting global navigation satellites and a ground station, with an exchange at the single photon level over a distance of 20,000km.

SpaceWatch.Global wishes all of our readers, contributors, advertisers, sponsors, and friends and family a Very Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings! We’ll be taking a break over the next few days to spend time with our families, and normal service shall resume on 27 December 2018. We’ll also be taking a …

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Political Affairs Office plays an integral and varied role in the organisation. Torsten Kriening was lucky enough to spend some time with Christina Giannopapa, Head of Political Affairs Office, Office Strategy Department, Director General’s Services, ESA, to find out more about her role and the intersection of political affairs and space.

An Arianespace medium-lift Soyuz launch vehicle transported the French CSO-1 reconnaissance satellite safely to orbit on 19 December 2018. This marked the third flight of Arianespace’s Soyuz and the launch was performed for France’s CNES (Centre national d'études spatiales) space agency and the DGA (Direction générale de l’armement) defence procurement agency, on behalf of the French Ministry of Defence.

e-GEOS, the geospatial information company that is a joint venture of Telespazio and the Italian Space Agency, has signed a contract with the Government of St. Lucia in the Caribbean for the provision of COSMO-SkyMed satellite data as part of an Early Warning System to help manage emergencies resulting from severe weather.

An Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F11) successfully launched the GSAT-7A military communication satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, India, on 19 December 2018.

HyperScout-1, the first miniaturized hyperspectral imager for space, successfully demonstrated that it is possible to process the images that are gathered by a satellite on board. By knowing the position of the satellite and in which direction it points, the instrument knows what it is looking at and can interpret the data, thus eliminating the need to download the data.

In order to provide for the new wave of mega Ka-band satellite constellations, Celestia Technologies of Harwell, UK, has signed an €8m contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) for the development of next generation Gateway ground stations.