Space

This Space Café Germany will feature ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, former Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations, and today international coordinator and special advisor to the ESA Director-General, in conversation with Andreas Schepers, Senior Space Communicator and friend of SpaceWatch.Global.

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 19 April - 25 April 2021”.

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Laura Seward Forczyk, owner of space consulting firm Astralytical, Atlanta, USA, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. My Ticket to Space! This Space Café will focus on the status of commercial human spaceflight. We will try to answer questions on suborbital vs orbital flight or commercial space stations.

Luxembourg, 27 April 2021. – Elon Musk shocked his audience when he admitted that “a bunch of people will probably die” in the attempt to get to Mars. “You might die, it’s going to be uncomfortable and probably won’t have good food,” Musk told Peter Diamandis, the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation for scientific discovery, according to numerous media reports.

Luxembourg, 27 April 2021. – The European Space Agency (ESA) has asked a consortium around Inmarsat to develop a natural disaster early warning system. The London-based satellite operator, the research organization SINTEF and the Norwegian company Geonor have been awarded a three-year contract with ESA, Inmarsat said.

Luxembourg, 27 April 2021. – “Faster and farther”: NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity flew a third time, rising five meters high and 50 meters far at a top speed of 2 meters per second, the U.S. space agency said. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California received a first bunch of data and images that the Perseverance rover, serving as a communications base station, captured.

Humans are setting out for the stars. Our space environment is being used more and more intensively, mega-constellations are beginning to light up the night sky and disrupt science. Junk is accumulating in the more heavily used Earth orbits. Several countries now want to go to the Moon, and this time plan to use its resources.

At its fourth meeting on 21 April 2021, the preparatory group for the European Space Traffic Management (STM) Conference set 7 July 2021 as the date for this event in virtual format. “With the progress we made at the hearing in March and the mapping we conducted at our preparatory group meeting this week, we are well prepared for an early July date” said Kai-Uwe Schrogl,

Luxembourg, 26 April 2021. – Arianespace launched 36 OneWeb satellites on a Soyuz rocket, bringing the entire OneWeb constellation to 182 satellites, Arianespace said. Flight ST31 was the 56th Soyuz mission carried out by Arianespace and its Starsem affiliate; it was the 326thmission in the Arianespace family of launchers, bringing the total number of satellites launched by Arianespace to 868.

Luxembourg, 26 April 2021. – The 5G IoT startup OQ Technology will launch its first batch of six satellites with Spaceflight, the company said. OQ signed an agreement with Spaceflight to procure launch capacity and provide associated launch and integration services for OQ’s first batch of six satellites from its planned constellation of more than 60 spacecraft, the Luxembourg-based startup said.