News

The first Ariane 6 fairing arrived at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana start a series of tests and prepare Europe’s next generation heavy-lift launch vehicle for flight, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. The two half-shells are manufactured by the Swiss Ruag.

Women in space: a senior officer of the Australian Royal Air Force, Catherine Roberts, will become the country’s Space Division new chief next year, Australian ABC News reported. Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts, who is currently the Head of Air Force Capability, will take over the newly created position of Head of Space Division from January, ABC said.

NASA and the space startup Axiom Space will detail the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) today, the U.S. space agency said. The spaceflight, named Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), is scheduled to launch no earlier than January 2022 for an eight-day mission aboard the orbiting complex.

Debris from the Chinese Long March 5B rocket that brought the country’s space station to orbit crashed into the Indian Ocean north of Maldives, U.S. and Chinese officials said. The huge piece of space junk made an uncontrolled re-entry back into Earth's atmosphere over the Arabian Peninsula Saturday night.

In this Space Cafe German edition, Andreas Schepers talked to ESA's international agencies coordinator and former ESA Astronaut and director of human spaceflight, Thomas Reiter about the past, present and future of human spaceflight. Thomas Reiter delivered a vivid report on his two spaceflights:

The new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson appointed Susie Perez Quinn as the agency’s new chief of staff. Quinn served as Nelson’s chief of staff and in several other leadership positions in the Senate and, most recently, as the director of government relations at the National Governors Association.

The U.S. military has no plan to shoot down the Long March 5B's remnants when they are expected to plunge back on Earth this weekend, the Guardian quoted the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. Hope was the rocket would land in the ocean and that the latest estimate was that it would come down between Saturday and Sunday, he said, according to the Guardian.

The U.S. Air Force asked OneWeb and Hughes to connect the Arctic, the companies announced. Hughes and OneWeb announced their selection by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) “to demonstrate managed LEO satellite communications (SATCOM) services to connect the Arctic region to sites around the globe”, the companies said in a statement.

The fifth attempt succeeded: SpaceX successfully completed a high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from its Starbase in Texas yesterday. It was the fifth attempt of a high-altitude test of Starship and the first one that did not end up with an explosion.

The Spanish satellite telecommunications operator Sateliot takes the lead to develop a low Earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellite constellation offering 5G coverage and a secure quantum key information exchange system. Sateliot is leading a consortium of a dozen companies and the Spanish Ministry of Defense, as a potential user, to deploy the nanosat constellation, the company said.