Russia&CIS

GK Launch Services, a subsidiary of Glavkosmos, Lavochkin Association, and Astroscale Japan Inc. held a kick-off meeting in Moscow on 12 December 2018 under the agreement on launch services for the Astroscale End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) satellite. ELSA-d will be orbited within a Soyuz-2 cluster mission that is scheduled …

The Government of India headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the agreement on cooperation in space research for peaceful purposes with Uzbekistan, according to a Trend News Agency report citing local Uzbek media. The agreement was signed between the two countries on 1 October 2018 during the first …

Azerbaijan’s state space corporation, Azercosmos, will examine the economic and commercial feasibility of building additional Earth observation satellites in its approved 2019-2022 state programme for remote sensing, according to a report by the Trend News Agency. Azercosmos already operates the Airbus-built AzerSky-1 Earth observation satellite, and through Airbus Defence and …

Azerbaijan’s second communications satellite, Azerspace-2, will reach its intended Geostationary orbit – 45 degrees East longitude – in January or February 2019, according to the country’s state space corporation Azercosmos, reports Trend News Agency. According to the company, at present the satellite is in its transfer orbit and is very …

The Russian state space corporation Roscosmos has been accused by a Russian journalist of spending “billions on space but kopecks” on the engineering talent required for the sustainable and long-term success of Russia’s space ambitions. Vladimir Koryagin, an investigative journalist for Lenta, wrote a report titled “A Flight to Nowhere: …

Andrey Potapov is an alumnus of the economic faculty of the Moscow State University and a former employee of Scanex. He was also director general of a pioneering Russian satellite manufacturer Sputnix. We asked him to explain how Skoltech is organized and what educational opportunities it has to offer. Tell …

Azerbaijan and Iran have concluded negotiations on space cooperation, to include the Iranian use of Azerbaijani communications satellites and the joint development of a remote sensing satellite, according Azerbaijani media reports. “We are currently holding negotiations on Iran’s use of satellites belonging to Azerbaijan. In addition, Iran has a satellite …

The Board of Directors of Russia’s Glavkosmos have elected on 6 December 2018 Dmitry Loskutov to be the company’s new Director General. Mr. Loskutov comes to Glavkosmos with a wealth of governmental and defence-diplomacy experience. Until 2004 he worked in the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, engaged in …

Following a string of high-profile incidents, failures, and corruption scandals and allegations, Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, has hit back at its Russian and international critics in a bizarre claim that criticism of the struggling space programme is an “information attack” designed to discredit Roscosmos and its efforts at reforming …

Firefly Aerospace, Inc. (Firefly), a provider of economical, and dependable launch vehicles, spacecraft and in-space services, have announced that they have been selected by NASA for the award of a Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract. The principal purpose of NASA’s CLPS program is to acquire end-to-end commercial payload services …