Middle East

The deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, announced on 29 December 2018 that Iranian experts have successfully built radars capable of monitoring satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), according Iranian news reporting. Addressing a conference at the Supreme National Defence University in Tehran, Brigadier …

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has established the Saudi Space Agency as part of a leadership shakeup enacted by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, in a Royal decree issued late on 27 December 2018. The Saudi King appointed his 62-year old son and former astronaut Prince Sultan bin Salman bin …

Israeli not-for-profit SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) completed the construction of the SpaceIL lunar lander and, in a ceremony at IAI facilities prior to being shipped to Cape Canaveral, placed a time capsule on board the spacecraft that will stay on the Moon indefinitely. The spacecraft, recently named Beresheet …

Following their announcement of a satellite broadband joint venture in September 2018, the UAE’s Yahsat and U.S. company Hughes Network Systems have officially launched the JV – called YahClick (powered by Hughes) – across the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia with immediate effect. This joint venture will provide greater …

Virgin Galactic, the private spaceflight company founded by Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard Branson achieved success on 13 December 2018 after its SpaceShipTwo Unity (VSS Unity) reached suborbital space for the first time over the Mojave Desert in California, United States. VSS Unity reached an altitude of 82.7 kilometres near …

Clear Objectives for a New Space Pioneer The UAE Space Agency has set out its stall right from the very beginning. It is highly ambitious, and since its establishment just four years ago, it has come an incredibly long way. It has overseen the initiation the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) …

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a Presidential decree on 12 December 2018 that formally establishes the Turkish Space Agency, along with its roles and missions. The decree ends a long road for the efforts in creating the agency with the process disrupted by the political instability resulting from the …

The Egyptian government has received a second extension from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to fill its orbital slot with a military communications satellite in an unprecedented and likely controversial decision by the international organisation, according to reporting in Space Intel Report. In 2016 the ITU granted its first extension …

The Syrian Minister of Communications and Technology, Iyad Khatib, has stated the need for Syria to develop a space programme and launch its first satellite into orbit, the ministry said on 11 December 2018, according to Russian news outlet Sputnik International. The minister visited a Syrian space research organisation called …

Gilat, the Israeli satellite communications equipment company, has been selected by the Local Authorities Satellite Communications (LASCOM), an agency of the Japanese government, to help provide a disaster response emergency communications platform along with the SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. This multi-million-dollar project will deliver a next-generation disaster response platform to …