Space for Earth

In this  Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global team's Dr. Emma Gatti and Torsten Kriening spoke with Susie Perez Quinn, NASA's Chief of Staff, Dr. Karen St. Germain,  NASA's Division Director of the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate, and Dr. Kate Calvin, NASA's Chief Scientist and Senior Climate Advisor. The episode was recorded in Oslo during GLOC -  Global Space Conference on Climate Change.

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Kevin O’Connell, Founder and CEO, Space Economy Rising, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, Publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. As strategic and economics conditions change, there are healthy questions about the speed and direction of the future space economy. What are the underlying factors driving the space economy, and how can we distinguish between hype and real drivers?

Reflex Aerospace, a Munich and Berlin-based startup specializing in the design and manufacture of advanced satellites, has signed Media Broadcast Satellite (MBS) as its first commercial customer. This strategic partnership will leverage Reflex’s satellite manufacturing expertise to support MBS in delivering cutting-edge space technology. Furthermore, the launch is tentatively in 2024 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, marking a significant milestone in achieving both companies’ ambitious goals.

Finnish Earth observation Company Kuva Space has received a five-year commercial contract worth €5M from the European Space Agency (ESA) to be the world’s sole provider of hyperspectral data services for the European Commission’s Copernicus Contributing Missions (CCM) program. As a result, Kuva Space will demonstrate its technological capabilities to monitor farming and aquaculture crops, forests, methane release, and harmful algae blooms in seas and coastal areas.

OroraTech has signed a multi-million contract with the European Space Agency to deliver data to the European Union as part of the Copernicus Contributing Mission (CCM). Leveraging its recently launched in-orbit thermal sensor network, OroraTech will contribute vital data to critical sectors such as emergency services, climate change analysis, marine management, and land management.

EnduroSat`s Balkan Constellation will join the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Copernicus Contributing missions after its selection. The selection happened in the presence of Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union, and Dr. Joseph Aschbacher, ESA DG. 

In this Space Café Radio - SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Dr Graham Turnock, Special Advisor at the European Space Agency ESA and ESA Accelerator Lead at GLOC - the Global Space Conference on Climate Change in Oslo in May 2023 ab the status of the accelerators and the way forward.

MDA Ltd has announced it is working with Thoth Technology Inc. to create a made-in-Canada deep space radar surveillance and space domain awareness (SDA) capability. As part of a strategic cooperation agreement, MDA will integrate its commercial data services with Thoth's ground-based radar technology to provide unprecedented levels of sovereign monitoring in deep space over Canada, providing both detection and characterization of space objects.

On the 25th of May 2023 GLOC, the first conference entirely focused on the role of the space sector for climate change mitigation, closed it’s first, extremely successful edition. Co-organized by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and the Norwegian Space Agency (NOSA), it was held in Oslo, Norway.

The Global Space Conference on Climate Change (GLOC 2023) arrived in Oslo last month; it was uncharacteristically interesting for a space conference. Not because it was overflowing with greatness, but because the bar for innovation and programmatic depth with space conferences has always tended to be quite low so the experience was unexpected.