North America

NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Sequential Phase II program selected space robotic technology company Astrobotic, to develop, test, and fly lunar night survival and communication technologies aboard the CubeRover platform, Astrobotic said. 

Orbital Reef, Sierra Space and Blue Origin’s upcoming commercial space station, has successfully completed its System Definition Review (SDR) with NASA. The SDR is key to establishing the functional baseline for the commercially developed, owned and operated low-Earth orbit (LEO) Orbital Reef.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) issued a warning to its 193 Member States on the harmful interference such as blocking, jamming or serious degradation of radio-wave-based services.  ITU defines harmful interference as a radio system receiving unwanted energy to an extent that inhibits the functioning of a radio-navigation service.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of our Solar System’s biggest planet, Jupiter, showing fine details along with its rings, satellites, and even galaxies in one image, giving scientists more information on the planet’s inner processes.  

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office selected space data provider SpaceLink, to participate in the Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node (Space-BACN) program designed to connect the proliferated space domain, SpaceLink said.

Intelsat filed a 30-day license application with the FCC to operate the Galaxy 15 satellite serving media customers in North America, outside of the +/- 0.05 degree East/West station-keeping box as it lost control of the broadcast satellite due to a geomagnetic storm.

This episode of Space Café Canada will feature Dr. Ram Jakhu and David Kuan-Wei Chen of McGill’s Centre for Air and Space Law, which spearheaded the newly released McGill Manual, the world’s first to clarify international law applicable to military uses of outer space, in conversation with Dr. Jessica West, Senior Researcher at Project Ploughshares and a friend of SpaceWatch.Global.

NASA has identified 13 candidate landing regions, each containing multiple potential landing sites for the upcoming 6.5-day Artemis III mission, within six degrees of latitude of the lunar South Pole, the Agency said. Artemis III will be the first mission to land astronauts on the lunar surface, including the first woman to visit the Moon.

U.S.-based commercial space company planning to offer in-space infrastructure services, Momentus, signed a service agreement with Luxembourg-based small satellites and space-based applications and services provider, LuxSpace, Momentus said. Hosted payloads are a foundational in-space infrastructure service enabling

Until recently, only a few States were able to access outer space. Since then, however, driven by technological advances, in particular by reusable orbital-class rockets and the resulting reduction in launching costs, more and more private companies have been able to enter the ‘space race’, and we can witness today the emergence of a significant commercial space economy.