News

Expedition 66 Flight Engineers Raja Chari of NASA and Matthias Maurer of ESA spent 6 hours and 54 minutes outside the ISS during the 248th spacewalk to carry out preparations for an upcoming solar array installation. Maurer and Chari installed hoses on one of the six radiators that keep systems at the proper temperature.

PSN Group (Pasifik Satelit Nusantara) has entered into contracts to build the Nusantara Lima Satellite with a planned launch in 2023 to augment the capacity of SATRIA-1, the company said. These two very high throughput satellites will make PSN one of the biggest satellite capacity providers in Asia, according to the firm. Its 330 Gbps service will cover Indonesia and its surrounding areas.

Blue Origin announced that the sixth crew member to join New Shepard’s 20th mission will be New Shepard Senior Director and Chief Architect, Gary Lai. He joins Marty Allen, husband and wife duo Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and Dr. George Nield. Lai will be replacing Pete Davidson, who is no longer able to fly to the edge of space this time.

Defense products and technologies provider Leonardo DRS, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Global Enterprise Solutions (GES) business to connectivity provider SES, for US $450 million. The transaction has already been approved by the board of directors of both companies. 

Satellite-based infrastructure monitoring solutions provider LiveEO is now a certified Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN), LivEO announced. AWS ISV is aimed at businesses providing software solutions that run on AWS or are integrated with it.

During this week’s Space Café, SpaceWatch.Global Publisher Torsten Kriening had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Josef Aschbacher, Director General at the European Space Agency (ESA) and as a special guest, Dr. Alexander Gerst, ESA Astronaut about "Ambitions for the future of Europe in Space - Agenda 2025"  live

Low Earth orbit satellite communications company OneWeb, announced it entered into an agreement with SpaceX to resume OneWeb’s satellite launch programme. The terms of the agreement are confidential. The first launch is scheduled for this year, adding to OneWeb’s 428-satellite in-orbit constellation, which makes up 66% of the fleet.

The critical mirror alignment steps of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are now complete and the team expects to meet or even exceed the optical performance science goals set for the space telescope, NASA said. Every optical parameter that has been checked and tested is performing at, or above, expectations, according to NASA.

Germany based Rivada Space Networks, a new company launching a constellation of 600 Ka-band low Earth orbit communications satellites, will be debuting the company’s system at Satellite 2022 in Washington DC.  Rivada Space was founded by U.S. wireless communications innovator Rivada Networks.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft atop has rolled out for the first time for a final uncrewed test before the Artemis 1 Moon mission. It took 10 hours and 28 minutes for SLS and Orion to reach the launch pad four miles away from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).