Features

In this week’s Space Cafè WebTalk, Maruska Strah, Executive Director of the World Space Week Association talked about the World Space Week and its importance for bringing understanding of space related activities to a wider general public. In 2019, the World Space Week Association reported over 8,000 events in 96 countries. …

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and the European Space Policy Institute, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and briefs. This is ESPI Briefs No. 43: ‘The new U.S. Defense Space Strategy’, originally published in July 2020.

It is an exciting time for space enthusiasts, particularly those who aim for economic development of the Moon. The Moon is awash in new flights, plans, and missions over the next decade – and very likely, far beyond that. A recent graphic by the ESA (below) captures the significant number of missions to the Moon coming more than the institutional or traditional governmental side.

The US Naval Intelligence Maritime Intelligence Integration Office (NMIO) recently hosted a virtual meeting sponsored by NATO ACT (Allied Command Transformation) on tools being used to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). 

In this week’s Space Cafè WebTalk, Jean-Jacques Dordain, Former Director General of the European Space Agency talked about space innovation in Europe.

Lately there has been a lot of attention paid to the heavens. Specifically, near-Earth space, between Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous. We recently pointed out in “Money! In! Space!” that there is a business renaissance in space businesses and the related infrastructures. Startups in the space (pun intended) have been expanding old applications, creating new ones, and promising ones over the horizon, from intraorbital satellite taxis to future honeymoon lunar “cruises”.

August 2020 sure proved that a lot of private capital can flow into the space sector, with a total of US$2.2 billion. Sure, SpaceX represented over 80% of this total – the company’s latest filing shows $1.9 billion raised of a potential total of $2.066 billion – but even without it, the sector total would have come to almost $400 million, distributed across geographies and subsectors.

The report from the Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) workshop, organized jointly by NSF’s NOIRLab and the American Astronomical Society (AAS), has been delivered to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

As we near the 2/3 point for the year 2020, it is starting to feel like a “lost year” for some. With many people having been working from home for the majority of the year, with borders largely closed, and with governments in turmoil, many are starting to ask whether 2020 can just be over already. Reasonable sentiment, to be sure.

In this week’s Space Cafè WebTalk, Thomas Jarzombek, Federal Government Coordinator of German Aerospace Policy talked about about Germany’s role in the European and global space sector