North America

Commercial space company Axiom Space, celebrated groundbreaking at the company’s new headquarters at Ellington Airport, the site of the Houston Spaceport in Space City. Axiom Space will construct a campus of offices, astronaut training, and mission control facilities, engineering development and testing labs, as well as a production facility.

In this Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Jim Bridenstine, Senior Advisor at Acorn Growth Companies, former NASA Administrator and US Congressman at the LEO Kinetic Space Safety Workshop in Lausanne about threats and risks in Low Earth Orbit and how to move forward to a sustainable future in space

US/UAE space tech company Precious Payload announced the acquisition of German space tech company HOSTmi, to fast-forward the commercialization of the European space industry. The partnership will utilize Precious Payload’s developer tools and smart solutions to strengthen existing HOSTmi services and lead joint projects.

Small satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital, primarily serving the United States aerospace and defense industry, announced it has shipped its CAPSTONE satellite to a launch site in New Zealand. The satellite will launch on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket using a Lunar Photon satellite upper stage to deploy the spacecraft on a lunar transfer trajectory. 

The second Edition of Space Café Austria by Judith Delany took a closer look at the trends and recent developments in European Space Policy. Host Judith Delany spoke with Tomas Hrozensky of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), an expert in the field. Tomas has been a Researcher at ESPI since July 2018. He holds an MA and PhD

Startup AST SpaceMobile, announced it has received an experimental license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) supporting its US-based testing of the BlueWalker 3 satellite. The company is building the first space-based cellular broadband network designed to be accessible directly by standard mobile phones, SpaceMobile said.

The Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), a key instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has successfully passed all its functional tests including subsystems and mechanisms, Airbus said. The NIRSpec commissioning team, including experts from Airbus, performed the required tests as Webb continues cooling down to cryogenic temperatures.

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Krystal Azelton, Director of Space Applications Programs at Secure World Foundation, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. The Urgency Of Ensuring Sustainability in Space. Krystal Azelton is a Director of Space Applications Programs

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Air Force Research Lab and Aerojet Rocketdyne completed a free flight test of Lockheed Martin’s Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC).  The vehicle accelerated to and maintained a speed faster than five times the speed of sound after release from the carrier aircraft.

During the sixth Space Café Canada event on April 29, 2022, host Jessica West sat down with Stephen Matier, President and CEO of Maritime Launch Services and Spaceport Nova Scotia, Canada’s first commercial space launch complex. In contrast to most other spaceports around the world, Spaceport Nova Scotia is intended to be fully commercial.