North America

Laser communications products provider Mynaric, has been chosen to provide Northrop Grumman with optical communications terminals for 14 satellites as part of the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 1 Tracking Layer program, Mynarix said. 

Astra, an American launch vehicle company, is celebrating cumulative committed orders for more than 200 engines and two complete programs of Astra Spacecraft Engines, already delivered.

Software-as-a-service provider Kayhan Space, along with partners Astroscale US and the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), has won a US Space Force award to develop an intelligent platform that autonomously enables spacecraft to safely engage with on-orbit support vehicles for services such as refueling, maintenance, debris removal and national security. Kayhan Space said.

Satellite communications company Viasat has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Link 16 Tactical Data Links (TDL) business to L3Harris Technologies for US $1.96 billion, Viasat said. The sale of Viasat’s Link 16 Tactical Data Link business includes the Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS) platforms.

Rocket Lab,  a leading launch and space systems company, has announced its selection by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to supply solar panels. The solar panels will power NASA’s shoe-box-sized mobile robots within the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Explorers (CADRE) program.

Launch and in-space services provider Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha FLTA002 mission successfully reached orbit and deployed customer payloads, the company said. Firefly became first US commercial space company with a rocket in the 1300-kg payload lift class.

NASA has concluded after careful analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was successful in altering Dimorphos’ orbit. DART was the first mission to purposely change the motion of a celestial object, demonstrating the planet’s asteroid deflection technology.

On September 30 2022  Ploughshares Senior Researcher Dr. Jessica West met with Dr. Ram Jakhu and David Kuan-Wei Chen, co-editor and managing editor, respectively, of the McGill Manual on International Law Applicable to Military Uses of Outer Space (McGill Manual). Volume I

NASA said its engineers have restored normal attitude control of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) spacecraft a month after it went into safe mode due to a problem during a trajectory correction maneuver.

In this Space Café Radio – SpaceWatch.Global Editor in Chief and Space Café Italy host Dr. Emma Gatti spoke with American astrophysicist, author and space communication legend Neil deGrasse Tyson. Emma met Neil during the 4th Secure World Foundation Summit for Space Sustainability, held in London on the 22nd and 23rd of June 2022, just before of the launch of his new book Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.  Together, they discussed his vision, his hopes for the future of humanity in Space, and about letting Kubrick down.