Space

Not yet: NASA rescheduled Mars helicopter Ingenuity’s maiden flight to “no earlier than April 14”, the agency said. Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that arrived late Friday night from a high-speed spin test of the rotors, NASA has chosen to reschedule the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s first experimental flight, NASA said.

The U.S. Government’s budget for fiscal year 2022 requests $24.7 billion for NASA, a 6.3 per cent increase compared to this year’s spending bill, the White House said. The President’s “discretionary request” includes $6.9 billion for NASA’s human exploration of Moon, Mars and beyond, an unspecified amount for its robotic exploration of the solar system

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) named its first female astronaut, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said. “Today we announce two new Emirati astronauts, among them the first female Arab astronaut. We congratulate them and count on them to raise the name of the UAE ever higher in space.”

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Joint Air Power Competence Centre, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “ Shortfalls in NATO’s Space Education”, originally published in the Joint Air Power Competence Centre Journal 31.

Join SpaceWatch.Global for an interesting and informative Space Café WebTalk featuring Theresa Hitchens, Space and Air Force reporter at Breaking Defense, Washington DC, USA. This event will take place on 20 April 2021 at 4:00 pm CEST. In our dialogue, we will discuss: 1. Developments in weapons tech,

Going private: The IoT specialist Orbcomm agreed to be acquired by the U.S. investment firm GI Partners, valuing the company at $1.1 billion, Orbcomm said. The Nasdaq-listed firm, a global provider of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, said it entered into a "definitive agreement" to be acquired, in an all-cash transaction, by GI Partners, a private investment firm based in San Francisco.

Laser focus: Airbus and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) develop a laser communication terminal demonstrator for aircraft, known as UltraAir. The project, which is co-financed by Airbus, TNO and the Netherlands Space Office (NSO), is part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ScyLight (Secure and Laser communication technology) programme, Airbus said. It covers the design, construction and testing of the technology demonstrator.

OroraTech, a Munich-based provider of satellite wildfire monitoring, and Spire, provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, want to partner to launch OroraTech’s first payload on a Spire 6U nanosatellite, Spire announced. The satellite planned for launch in December 2021 will carry OroraTech’s thermal-infrared camera and data processing unit designed to detect fires and transmit the data using Spire’s satellite and ground network, Spire said

Rocket Lab wants its second Electron booster back

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and The Strategist, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles. This is “The Quad must go to space” by Malcolm Davis, originally published on 7 April 2021.