North America

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Joint Air Power Competence Centre, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “From Satellite Generations to a Continuous Evolution”, originally published on the Joint Air Power Competence website.

RUAG Space extends its partnership with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) to produce payload fairings for the Atlas and the Vulcan Centaur rocket programs, the Swiss company said. RUAG Space and ULA modified and extended their existing development and production contract until 2024.

The European and the American space agencies, ESA and NASA, formed a strategic partnership to further Earth science and combat climate change. The aim of the partnership is to advance science and ensure that data from Earth-observing satellites are used to their best advantage, ESA said.

NASA supports nuclear space propulsion technologies and pushes for the design of nuclear thermal engines, the agency said. Together with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), NASA has selected three reactor design concepts for a nuclear thermal propulsion system. The 12-month contracts go to three consortia and are valued at approximately $5 million each.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Joint Air Power Competence Centre, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Chinese ‘High-Risk’ Corporate Space Actors”, originally published on the Joint Air Power Competence website.

Masten Space Systems, the Californian Moon and Mars mission specialist, will develop a positioning and navigation network for the Moon, the company said. Masten was awarded a Phase II contract, through the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, “to develop and demonstrate a lunar positioning and navigation network prototype”, the company founded in 2004 said.

This piece describes the challenges posed by the increasing proliferation of orbital space debris, as well as debris falling back to Earth. It describes how a ‘business as usual’ case going forward threatens to result in outer space becoming less accessible and navigable, thus compromising future space activities. It describes the existing legal and governance frameworks that has been developed

The U.S. space agency NASA and Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, concluded their contract to develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) for the Moon gateway, NASA said. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, HALO will be a critical way station and outpost in the orbit around the Moon. The firm, fixed-price contract is valued at $935 million, NASA said.

LEOcloud and Ramon.Space partner to build a satellite-hosted cloud, the companies announced. They entered into a partnership to develop satellite-hosted cloud edge computing capabilities for commercial, government and military customers, the companies said.

He made it: Sir Richard Branson and three colleagues from his space company Virgin Galactic took the round trip to the edge of space. Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity successfully reached space yesterday, completing the company’s fourth rocket-powered spaceflight.