Asia Pacific

Sky and Space Global (SAS), the New Space satellite communications company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, successfully demonstrated the capabilities of its Diamonds test-bed Cubesats to the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) in Guyana, opening up the possibility of offering its narrowband communications service to the Caribbean.

The good, the bad, the great, and the ugly were all on display as the United Nations community gathered in Vienna last month to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first UN space policy conference.

Thales Alenia Space, one of France’s leading satellite manufacturers, is mounting an intense marketing campaign in Singapore to sell the small Southeast-Asian city-state a high-resolution Earth observation satellite.

Planet is set to provide its imagery and analysis to Thailand under an agreement with the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), an agency under Thailand's Ministry of Science and Technology. The company will provide the organisation with Planet Basemaps over the country on a quarterly basis which will provide the government with up-to-date and cloud-free imagery that can be used by various ministries such as agriculture, rural development and water.

Indonesia, the world’s largest island nation, is looking for an operator with which to partner on a 150Gbps High Throughput Satellite (HTS) satellite that will deliver Internet connectivity to its as yet unconnected population.

Sky and Space Global Ltd. (SAS), the New Space satellite communications company that is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) for the potential launch of SAS’s Pearl constellation of satellites.

Pakistan’s first high-resolution Earth observation satellite, the Pakistan Remote Sensing Satellite (PRSS) 1, and the country’s first indigenously built test satellite, PakTES-1A, were successfully launched from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on the morning of Monday, 9 July 2018, on board a Long March-2C satellite launch vehicle.

Astroscale has reached a key milestone in its quest to develop space debris removal services in order to secure long-term spaceflight and sustainability.

There is a new sector emerging within the space industry that could utterly revolutionise the satellite sector. On-Orbit servicing could be the biggest advancement the industry has seen yet as it could bring with it the capabilities to tackle space debris, to repair operational satellites and even upgrade them, reducing the need for new satellites and addressing some of the industry’s greatest challenges. Here, BusinessCom Networks offers up its view on on-orbit servicing.

Not three, but two launches may be performed from Kourou in 2018