Another SpaceX rideshare passenger last week was Tiger-2, a commercial 5G Internet of Things (IoT) satellite built and owned by 5G OQ Technology, a startup based in Luxembourg. Tiger-2 was successfully launched – together with 87 other satellites – aboard the SpaceX Transporter-2 rideshare mission, OQ said.
Read More »Space Race II: Yulia Peresild in pole position over Tom Cruise
Space Race number two, more for Hollywood: the Russian actress Yulia Peresild and the American Tom Cruise compete to be the first to shoot a movie in space. In that race, it seems that the Russian star is in the pole position. The 36-years old actress and her director are planning to take off from Baikonur to reach the ISS in October.
Read More »Space Race I: Branson to reach space nine days before Bezos
Space Race number one: The founder of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson, will be his own first passenger and fly into space aboard his Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo (VSS) this week, on 11 July. Branson thus seems to be ready to beat Jeff Bezos who announced that he would get on board his Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, together with his brother Mark, for a flight on 20 July.
Read More »Space Café WebTalk with Niklas Niennas Recap: Liberté, science, démocratie: the EU’s new space prerogatives
During this week’s Space Café, SpaceWatch.Global publisher, Torsten Kriening spoke with a Member of the European Parliament and member of the German Alliance 90/The Greens party, Niklas Niennas, about Europe’s role and response to the space race 2.0.
Read More »Commission kickstarts €1.2bn European Defence Fund
The European Commission kick-started the €1.2 billion European Defence Fund and awarded €158 million to 26 projects and another €137 million to the Eurodrone and the ESSOR software project. The adoption of the first European Defence Fund (EDF) annual work programme paves the way to the immediate launch of 23 calls for proposals, the Commission said.
Read More »Exolaunch, ESA, and OneWeb add new nanosatellites
Update from the launch front: 29 out of the 88 satellites that SpaceX launched in its Transponder-2 mission were sharing the ride through Exolaunch, another 3 are from the European Space Agency (ESA), Exolaunch and ESA said, while OneWeb launched 36 more satellite for its internet constellation on a Soyuz rocket commercialized by Arianespace from Vostochny in Siberia.
Read More »NASA offers industry $45 million to solve Moon landing risks
NASA awarded fixed-price, milestone-based contracts of up to $45 million for commercial-led work on Moon landing services, the agency said. NASA is seeking to mature designs and conduct technology and engineering risk-reduction tasks for the human landing system (HLS), which will ferry Artemis astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back, the agency said.
Read More »Virgin Orbit launches “Tubular Bells”, its first commercial mission
Only five months after it reached space in a test flight, Virgin Orbit successfully launched its first commercial mission, the company said. The mission called “Tubular Bells: Part One” was launched from Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747, the “Cosmic Girl”, and with a two-stage rocket called LauncherOne
Read More »Shetland Space Centre changes its name to SaxaVord Spaceport
The Shetland Space Centre is changing its name to SaxaVord Spaceport, the center said. The rocket launch site and ground station, located in the UK’s most northerly island of Unst, Shetland, is the designated site of next year’s UK Pathfinder launch by Lockheed Martin and ABL Systems.
Read More »ArianeGroup takes part in European space surveillance
The European Commission has selected ArianeGroup to participate in three space surveillance and early warning projects under the European Defense Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), ArianeGroup announced. The projects are part of the “Space Situational Awareness and Early Warning” category of the defense program.
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