Asia Pacific

Rocket Lab posted the following announcement on 25 March 2020: Rocket Lab has postponed the launch of its next mission in response to the COVID-19 situation. In response to the evolving COVID-19 situation, we have paused launch preparations for our next mission to protect the health and safety of Rocket …

China successfully launched three national security satellites on board a Long March 2C satellite launch vehicle from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre on 24 March 2020, according to Chinese news media sources. The Long March 2C launched the sixth group of three Yaogan-30 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites from …

Korean cyber start-up S2W LAB announced on 20 March 2020 that it has signed a contribution agreement with Interpol to support Dark Web data analytics. The company is providing data analysis of Dark Web data for the next year. Due to the difficulty of tracking across the Dark Web it has emerged as a …

In a recent South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) videoconference to develop a joint strategy to combat Covid-19, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani asked India to make a satellite available to Afghan residents to assist with online education and help ensure social distancing to prevent spread of the virus, according …

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced on 18 February 2020 that it has completed construction of a new facility for the production of satellites at the company’s Kamakura Works in Kamakura, Japan. Together with existing facilities, Mitsubishi Electric’s combined annual capacity will increase to 18 satellites, up from 10 at present, which …

Lukas Coch/AAP David Blair, University of Western Australia; Bruce Hobbs, CSIRO; David Franklin Treagust, Curtin University, and Malcolm McCulloch, University of Western Australia This article is part of a series in The Conversation on radical ideas to solve the environmental crisis. In 1896 Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius explored whether Earth’s …

The Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES) Board of Directors convened for its 362nd session on 12 March 2020. During this meeting, they gave the go-ahead to engage France in the development of the French-Indian Trishna programme and to pursue activities for the new Space Inspire series of flexible satellites, as …

NASA/JPL?Cornell Katarina Miljkovic, Curtin University We’ve all heard of earthquakes, but what about marsquakes? NASA’s InSight mission has, for the first time, recorded seismic activity coming from Mars’ interior. The observations, recorded in 2019 and published today, will help understand the red planet’s internal structure, composition and dynamics. It opens …

Rocket Lab, a space technology company and the global leader in dedicated small satellite launch, announced on 9 March 2020 that its next mission will deploy payloads for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space. …

Singapore-based Kacific Broadband Satellites Group announced on 9 March 2020 that its first communications satellite, KACIFIC1, has entered commercial service and is ready to support customers across the Asia-Pacific. Designed and manufactured by Boeing, KACIFIC1 is a high-throughput, Ka-band satellite which successfully launched on 16 December 2019 from Cape Canaveral, …