Frontiers News

South Korean government agencies and universities have five payloads on board the upcoming SpaceX Falcon-9 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, United States. The launch is currently scheduled for 19 November 2018, and will loft approximately 60 satellites from numerous countries and companies.

New Zealand's Centre for Space Science Technology (CSST) announced on 12 November 2018 their role in facilitating their first international space mission partnership, as a calibration and validation (cal/val) partner for the NASA ECOSTRESS mission.

Taiwanese New Space company Odysseus is set to relocate to Luxembourg from its home base in Tainan, Taiwan, after winning a U.S.$570,000 prize from the Luxembourg Space Agency, following the company's first-place finish in the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Resources Challenge.

Portugal is about to make a big splash in the space sector with parallel announcements covering a major cooperative programme with China, and a proposed space launch complex in the Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic ocean involving European, Russian, and U.S. company bids to build it.

MYSAT-1, an educational CubeSat built by 20 students at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is due to be launched as part of the Cygnus NG-10 resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on board a Northrop Grumman Antares launch vehicle from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, Wallops Island in the United States, on 15 November 2018.

Ethiopian scientists and engineers are building a small Earth observation satellite in cooperation with and with funding from China, which will be launched from China in 2019, according to a report in The East African newspaper. This announcement is the culmination of much effort to bring Ethiopian space ambitions to reality.

U.S. New Space orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has confirmed the launch window for the upcoming ‘It’s Business Time’ mission. The nine-day launch window will open from 11 to 19 November 2018 (NZDT), with daily launch opportunities between 16:00 – 20:00 NZDT (03:00 – 07:00 UTC).

Japan's New Space scene is little known and understood outside of Tokyo, despite the emergence of some interesting startups such as iSpace and Infostellar to name just two as well as some big Japanese government announcements about supporting startups in the space sector. SpaceWatch.Global reached out to Masashi Sato, a Senior Consultant at the Nomura Research Institute Ltd. (NRI) in Tokyo and a leading expert on the Japanese space startup scene, to find out what the current state of play is and what the future holds.

Singaporean New Space debris removal company Astroscale has announced that it has raised U.S.$50 million from investors led by INCJ Ltd., as well as from SBI Investment Co. Ltd. and Mitsubishi Estate Co. Ltd. This fourth round of funding means that the company has now raised U.S.$102 million in total since its founding in 2013.

Nigeria is lobbying the African Union (AU) to host its African Space Centre, according to a report published in the Nigerian newspaper Independent on 29 October 2018.