Middle East

The EgyptSat-A, also known as MisrSat-A, high-resolution Earth observation satellite is due to be launched by Russia in November 2018, just as the threat to Egypt’s borders and unrest in the Sinai Peninsula is becoming more acute. Egyptian security and military forces are under growing pressure to stop insurgent and …

KhalifaSat, the UAE Earth observation system that is also the first Emirati-built satellite, will be launched from Japan on 29 October 2018. KhalifaSat has been in development since 2013, and will be lofted into orbit from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Japan. The earth observation satellite will join the UAE’s …

SpaceWatch.Global last spoke to Gernot Groemer, Founder and Administrative Director of the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) last year when we covered the Forum’s work and activities on the Mars Analogue missions. This week, we speak to Groemer as a founding member of the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) which aims …

In a textbook example of how cyber activity is often a mirror of geopolitics, a Turkish hacktivist group called Ayyildiz Tim has been accused of hacking and then hijacking the social media accounts of prominent U.S. journalists to spread messages in support of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. These cyber …

Egypt is making preparations to receive its sixth satellite, MisrSat-2, that has been built using a grant from China and will be shipped to Egypt in October 2019. Dr. Medhat Mokhtar, Chairman of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSSS), said that the Chinese grant for the …

Palestinian terror group Hamas has been accused by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of using photographs of attractive women posted on Instagram as a ploy to download spyware on the mobile telephones of Israeli soldiers. The allegations follow claims made in 2016 and 2017 that Hamas had made similar attempts …

U.S. cyber security company SecureWorks, a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, has issued a report claiming that a previously identified Iranian hacker group called COBALT DICKENS is likely behind numerous fake university websites that target legitimate users in order to provide the Iranian government access to university library holdings. According to …

The recent pronouncement by President Donald Trump that called for the creation of a separate U.S. Space Force has been met with some consternation by a number of commentators around the world. This reaction seems more concerned with the controversial persona of President Trump rather than with the policy substance …

African telecommunications company Liquid Telecom has made a U.S.$8 million bid to acquire Israeli company Satcom Systems Ltd., a subsidiary of the troubled Eurocom Group, and a sister company of Spacecom, the Israeli satellite communications company that operates the AMOS fleet. According to a report published on Calcalistech.com, the bid …

Amidst a worsening economic crisis, largely self-inflicted by the unorthodox economic policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and deteriorating relations with its longstanding ally the United States, Turkey has rolled out a 100-day action plan to initiate its space ambitions. The 100-day action plan has been prepared by the Turkish …