Middle East

The future of the exploration of Moon and Mars took center stage at the IAF Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021) in St. Petersburg, the federation said. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, announced their plans to send a rover to the Moon by 2024/2025.

Virgin Orbit is close to merging with a SPAC, valuing Richard Branson’s company at $3 billion, Sky News reported. Virgin Orbit is close to finalising a deal to combine with NextGen Acquisition II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) set up by George Mattson, a former Goldman Sachs banker, Sky News reported.

The Spanish high-tech group GMV will supply the control center and flight dynamics system for Yahsat’s Thuraya 4‑NGS satellite, the company announced. Thuraya 4‑NGS is a next generation L-band system built by Airbus on its Eurostar Neo platform and slated for operations in 2024.

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present the 28th episode in our podcast series The Space Cafe Podcast: Mahsa Moghimi Esfandabadi, Space Architect. What our habitats on foreign shores will look like. Episode 028 features a special guest Mahsa Moghimi Esfandabadi.

Scorpio Shipmanagement equips its entire tanker and bulker fleet and connects its vessels with Marlink’s hybrid VSAT network solution, the company based in Oslo and Monaco said. The service extension will provide Scorpio with higher bandwidth services to meet an increasing level of business need for higher data rates and usage volumes.

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present the 26th episode in our podcast series The Space Cafe Podcast: Torsten Kriening - Mastermind behind one of the fastest growing space industry news outlets. Episode 026 features a special guest Torsten Kriening. Torsten Kriening is your point of contact when you need information about whoever you want in the space industry.

In this week’s Space Café UAE  Sahith Reddy Madara, UAE’s National Point of Contact for the Space Generation Advisory Council talked about the Future of Aerospace Engineering. This Space Café UAE, held on 19 April 2021, was hosted by Abdulla A. Wasel, Managing Associate of Wasel & Wasel,

Since the early years of the last decade, the new space industry boomed, utilizing the rideshare (or hitchhiking - no towel needed) opportunities to reach orbit on almost all major launch vehicles. Dnepr, Soyuz, Vega, Long March, Electron, Falcon-9, LauncherOne, and many more all offer opportunities for small satellites. In fact, the industry is so thriving that two niche industries followed.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) has signed a contract with Japan’s ispace, inc., under which the latter will provide payload delivery services for the ambitious Emirates Lunar Mission. Under this agreement, ispace becomes a key strategic and implementation partner to MBRSC on the Emirates Lunar Mission, the first of its kind from the Arab world.

Paris, 13 April 2021. – The Norwegian network provider Marlink Group can close the acquisition of ITC Global, the company said. Backed by Apax Partners, Marlink obtained final regulatory approvals to acquire 100% of ITC Global from Panasonic, the group said. Marlink and ITC Global are preparing for a swift closing of the transaction in the coming weeks, the company said.