Russia&CIS

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Orbital Gateway Consulting we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Dongfang Hour China Aerospace News Roundup 27 Dec - 2 January 2022 ”. Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Dongfang Hour China Space News Roundup, in 2022!

The U.S. committed to extend the operations of the International Space Station (ISS) through 2030, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced. The Biden-Harris Administration wants to continue to work with its international partners “to enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory through the rest of this decade”.

Russia launched its third successful demonstration flight of the Angara A5 rocket on Monday, however, its Persei upper stage suffered a failure, NASA Spaceflight reported. This was the final launch needed to enter operational status, although further tests might be needed prior to operations.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket equipped with the Fregat upper stage is to launch 36 OneWeb communications satellites later today from the Baikonur spaceport, Roscosmos reported. The deployment of the new spacecraft will increase the number of satellites in the cluster to 394.

SpaceWatch.Global has been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts by Steven Freeland. This is “What Sort of Space “Race” Should We Be Pursuing?”, originally published 15 December 2021 at Australian Institute of International Affairs by Steven Freeland. If a war in space does take place, the devastation would be long-lasting and perhaps irreversible.

On 15 November 2021, a Russian ground-based DA-ASAT (direct ascent anti-satellite) interceptor, ‘Nudol’, hit defunct Russian spy satellite Cosmos 1408, built and launched in the 1980s, at an altitude of 480 km. The destruction caused a cloud of debris of about 1500 pieces and forced the crew of the ISS, four Americans, two Russians, and a German,

In this session of Space Cafè “Moriba’s Vox Populi 08” Dr. Moriba Jah talked about the Russian Anti-Satellite Test - What are the intended and unintended consequences? with Alex Fielding, Artem Mokhnatkin, Holger Krag, Michael Byers, Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Col. Scott Brodeur, Victoria Newberry,

Roscosmos and Space Adventures has launched and successfully docked the Soyuz MS-20 space tourism mission with two space tourists on board, NASA reported. The spacecraft docked with the ISS’ Poisk module six hours after launch. The crew of three, including two Japanese space tourists will stay on the Space Station for 12 days.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Alice Gorman, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. This is “Private space stations are coming. Will they be better than their predecessors?”, originally published 5 December 2021 at The Conversation.

The recent op-ed is an opinion piece, the opinions of the authors. As principals in these operations, their opinions are different than those who operate satellites. We will always be able to launch and retrieve satellites. Space is a finite resource only in the sense that our actions establish an equilibrium with a relatively fixed number of satellites.