North America

Space traffic management (STM) is an enabler for reliable, safe space operations – the real objective that the global space community needs to rally around during this unprecedented growth of space system deployments and growth in orbital debris. [See Endnote 1]

In this week’s Space Cafè WebTalk,  Doug Loverro, President at Loverro Consulting, Virgina, USA talked about his feature: "Rethinking the Inevitable: Why We Need to Stop Hoping, and Prepare for Space Warfare", published on SpaceWatch.Global. For decades the international community has tried, and failed, to achieve agreement on treaties aimed at preventing war in space. From the 1980s “Treaty to Prevent an Arms Race in Space”

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Prof. Steven Freeland, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. This is “‘War in space’ would be a catastrophe. A return to rules-based cooperation is the only way to keep space peaceful”, originally published 30 November 2020 at The Conversation.

Rocket Lab starts the year with OHB microsat launch

Scott Pace leaves U.S. National Space Council

In the not-so-distant future, some country’s leader will be forced to answer the following question – will they passively allow the citizens and military forces of their nation to be targeted, with impunity, by the space forces of an adversary nation? 

Space financing finished 2020 on a strong note, with December being the third best month of the entire year, raising a total of about US$560 million,

U.S. SDA awards $150 million launch contract to SpaceX

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC) will finally get its chance to demonstrate to the rest of the space community its value-added in taking stewardship of civil space situational awareness and space traffic management, as was indicated in National Space Policy Directive #3, signed on June 18th of 2018. This will be through a Congressionally-mandated Space Traffic Management Pilot (STMP) program to develop an initial Open Architecture Data Repository (OADR). 

Astrobotic’s CubeRover successfully completed more than 150 mobility tests inside a 120-ton enclosure designed to mimic the surface of the Moon.