Asia Pacific

The UK Space Agency announced on the 8th of August the recipients to receive the first phase of its £20 million International Bilateral Fund investments. These investments are intended to help UK organisations to link up with the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, India, Singapore, South Africa and form collaborations that will progress space research and investment in new technologies. The International Bilateral Fund is the Agency’s first fund dedicated to building and strengthening international relationships to help advance the UK’s goals in space. Some projects will focus on enhancing relationships to unlock future economic opportunities for the UK, and others will focus directly on science missions and technologies with strong commercial potential. 

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has announced it has signed a double-launch deal with NASA to deliver the Agency’s climate change research-focused mission, PREFIRE, to low Earth orbit in 2024.  The launches will consequently be the 7th and 8th missions Rocket Lab has launched for NASA since 2018.

Summer is upon us, and as our gaze shifts towards the stars during those warm, clear nights, SpaceWatch.Global brings you its second collection or the Summer Listening Series. Based on the vote by our newsroom, we have mapped out an interstellar journey across five categories. This week we are starting with “Climate, Space and Earth.”

RIKEN, Japan’s largest research institution, Mitsui Bussan Aerospace, and Kongsberg NanoAvionics announced on the 7th of August their collaboration on the NinjaSat1 X-ray observation mission. The aim of this two-year mission in low Earth orbit (LEO) is to observe X-ray photons from bright X-ray objects in the universe. The NinjaSat team intends to observe black holes and neutron stars that brighten suddenly in X-rays and coordinate with on-ground optical observatories to study how matter accretes to these compact objects. 

Warpspace has announced that the National Research and Development Agency New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) has accepted its proposal, "Development of a modem and router to realize a multi-protocol platform for optical communications in space,"  for the Japanese "SBIR Program" (one-stop-shop type) for fiscal year 2023.

Pale Blue has announced that it received a new contract from Yonsei University in South Korea to provide the Resistojet (0.5U-sized water vapor) propulsion system for a pair of 6U* satellites. The propulsion system will enable a formation flying for a laser crosslink system between the two nanosatellites in LEO and conduct optical communication between the two satellites.

The India Space Research Organization (ISRO) has released lunar images from the Chandrayaan-3 mission as the spacecraft successfully completed its Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). The spacecraft performed the insertion by retro-burning at its closest point to Moon (Perilune) for 1835 seconds, starting at 19:12 Hrs (IST). The maneuver resulted in an orbit of 164 km x 18074 km, as the research organization intended.

Summer is upon us, and as our gaze shifts towards the stars during those warm, clear nights, SpaceWatch.Global brings to you its new Summer Listening Series. Based on a vote by our esteemed team members, we have mapped out an interstellar journey across five captivating categories. This week, we're launching with the ever-fascinating realm of the "Moon and Exploration."

SatSure, an Earth Observation space data application leader, announced on the 1st of August its equity investment in Astrogate Labs. SatSure aims to make use of Astrogate’s laser communications system, Astro-Link, for their subsidiary KalediEO. Astro-Link has a satellite-to-ground communications speed of 1 Gbps. 

In this Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global's Rika Valluri spoke with Muhamad Nurazmi Abbas, the Chief Executive Officer of Gading group, a group of companies are involved in providing services to the Aerospace, Marine, Defence, Energy, Technology, Waste Management, and related markets based out of Malaysia.