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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 “Exploring Synergistic Potential of the Portuguese Space Strategy”, originally published in the Joint Air Power Competence Centre Journal 31.

In March 2021 the UK Ministry of Defence published its Defence Command Paper, ‘Defence in a Competitive Age’ referred to as the DCP, dovetailing the UK Government’s ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’ referred to as the IR. To much less fanfare a Defence and Security Industrial Strategy,

SpaceWatch.Global has been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. This is “Space Travel Reality Show Partnered With NASA, Featured On Colbert”, originally published 13 April 2021 at Forbes by Laurel Donnellan. Space Hero will be the world's first global competition to send a civilian into space on a $55M, 10-day trip to the International Space Station.

Paris, 23 April 2021. – The German Aerospace Center (DLR) wants to land a radiation detector on the Moon onboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander in 2021, Astrobotic said. DLR will send the detector to measure key radiation data on the flight to the Moon and on the lunar surface.

During this week’s Space Café episode, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening had the chance to speak with space reporter, Theresa Hitchens. Theresa is a space and air force reporter at Breaking Defense, a digital magazine that reports on the strategy, politics and technology of the international defence sector.

Paris, 22 April 2021. – Another breakthrough: NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance was able to extract oxygen from the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, the U.S. space agency said. “While the technology demonstration is just getting started, it could pave the way for science fiction to become science fact – isolating and storing oxygen on Mars”, NASA said.

Paris, 22 April 2021. – SpaceX and NASA are targeting tomorrow, Friday, 23 April, for the Crew-2 launch to the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX said. Falcon 9’s launch of Dragon’s second six-month operational crew mission to the ISS is scheduled for Friday, with a back-up opportunity on Monday, SpaceX said.

Paris, 22 April 2021. – Virgin Orbit will launch a series of six hyperspectral LEO satellites for the defense and security company QinetiQ and the geospatial analytics company HyperSat, Virgin Orbit said. Virgin Orbit will provide launch services for each satellite via its LauncherOne system. The first satellite will launch no earlier than 2023.

Paris, 21 April 2021. – European space experts call for a better control of space debris and regulation of space traffic, the Financial Times (FT) reports. The launch of thousands of new satellites in ‘mega-constellations’ to improve global internet access will exacerbate the growing problem of space debris, the FT quoted experts from a conference of the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday.

Paris, 20 April 2021. – 9 times 5: Amazon contracted nine Atlas V rockets to launch its Project Kuiper broadband constellation, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) announced. With Project Kuiper, Amazon wants to increase global broadband coverage through a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).