Space

NASA has expanded its Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program (CSDAP) to include Airbus as the first radar data provider to NASA’s community of researchers and scientists, Airbus announced. The company will help advancing NASA’s science and application goals. Airbus will provide a comprehensive catalog of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Earth observation data products to the Agency.

Spire Global announced it has successfully completed the acquisition of exactEarth by way of a plan of arrangement after all closing conditions were met. Spire acquired all of the outstanding common shares of exactEarth for US $1.9592 in cash and 0.1 share of Spire Class A common stock.

The Federation of German Industries (BDI) partners with five associations and 26 companies to establish a new space initiative and strengthen “networking between space, start-ups and industry”, the federation said. "With this new initiative, the BDI wants to send a strong signal of a joint departure in space for Germany and Europe," said BDI CEO Joachim Lang.

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.

The Swiss space startup SWISSto12 partners with the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop a micro satellite prototype, the company said. The new satellite product line and its first protoflight model will be developed and built under a partnership project between ESA and SWISSto12, the enterprise based in Renens in Switzerland said. The first satellite is due for launch in 2025.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described a critical situation in a companywide email, regarding the lack of progress in the development of the Raptor engine that is to power the Starship rocket, CNBC reports. “We face genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year,” Musk added.

India’s government told SpaceX to stop taking preorders for their Starlink broadband services as they did not have a license to operate in the country yet, India’s Ministry of Communication stated. Citizens were warned against preordering Starlink as well just nine months after the solicitations began.

In this Space Café Radio - Special on the recent Russian Anti-Satellite Test – SpaceWatch.Global contributing editor Dr. Emma Gatti spoke with her guests about "Is Space an asset, or a weapon?" In this special episode of Space Cafè Radio, we explore the political and strategic implications of the 15th of November 2021 Russian ASAT attack.

In honour of this sacred experience and all of you who know me and have enrolled in this global vision, I, Moriba Jah have partnered with SpaceWatch.Global to run an exciting Space Café series: Moriba’s Vox Populi (Latin for “the people’s voice”) where I intend to choose topics of relevance to space safety, security, and sustainability

Pulsar Fusion has demonstrated its new, MACH-7 green hybrid rocket fuelled with N2O and HDPE from recycled plastic in Gstaad, Switzerland. The engine is capable of launching vehicles to an altitude of several tens of km or powering the upper stage of a rocket into orbit.