Space

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.

In this Space Café Radio – our Review 2021 series, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Dr Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra about military space in 2021 in Australia and globally and what to watch out for the upcoming year. 

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it needed two more months to complete the environmental review of SpaceX Starship orbital launches from the Boca Chica facility in Texas. The FAA was unable to meet the original deadline of 31st December due to the high volume of comments submitted.

The US $10B space observatory has flown beyond the orbit of the Moon after completing the second of the three required mid-course correction burns, NASA reported. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched on Christmas Day to begin its 29-day deployment process. About half an hour later, it automatically deployed its solar panel to start generating its own power.

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present the 45th episode, a special, in our podcast series Space Cafe Podcast#045 Special: Peter Rumler, ESA, Launching James Webb Space Telescope. Episode 045 features a special guest Peter Rumler. Anyone who takes time for an interview just 40 minutes before the launch of the largest telescope of all time has a lot of nerve.

Satellites from SpaceX’s Starlink Internet Services had two "close encounters" with the Chinese space station in July and October, according to a document submitted by China to the UN's space agency. The China Space Station had to take “preventive collision avoidance control” measures to avoid colliding with the satellites.

Two Shenzhou-13 astronauts conducted a six-hour spacewalk on Sunday to install equipment outside Tiangong space station’s Tianhe module, the China Manned Space Agency reported. This was the fourth spacewalk conducted since the launch of the Tianhe core module in April this year.

In this Space Café Radio – our Review 2021 series, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Prof Kai-Uwe Schrogl. Prof Schrogl is an authority in global space law and space diplomacy. He was seconded from the European Space Agency ESA to the German Federal Ministry

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.

Virgin Orbit partners with Horizon Technologies, takes an equity stake in it and becomes its preferred launch provider, the company said. Horizon wants to expand its Amber constellation and its space-based marine intelligence services with the help of Virgin Orbit´s LauncherOne.