Space

Saudi Arabia’s Taqnia Space has contracted with Eutelsat, one of Europe’s largest satellite communications providers, to provide additional satellite capacity for Taqnia’s in-flight connectivity services on board Saudia flights.

Engineers of the Progress Rocket Space Centre headquartered in the city of Samara are working on a new way of putting nanosatellites into orbit, says Dmitry Baranov, the acting general director of the Centre.

Yahsat, the Abu Dhabi-based satellite communications operator, has completed its buyout of Dubai-based Thuraya, a leading mobile satellite services operator, and has also announced the appointment of a new chief executive officer for Thuraya, Ali Al Hashemi.

Israel's Gilat is becoming a major presence in the Latin American telecommunications market after it announced a deal with Hispasat, the Spanish satellite communications operator, to help commercialise Hispasat's Ka-band satellite capacity over Brazil.

The Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center has completed the proposal for a new reusable rocket development and has sent the documents for project assessment to the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), a leading scientific institution with Roscosmos.

The UK space sector is truly on the up. Years of hard work preparing the ground are finally paying off. With recent announcements promising long awaited spaceports, and the rapid growth and leadership of the UK in the smallsat industry, iconic Goonhilly Teleport is looking forward to a glittering future.

With a number of Western satellite companies developing in-orbit servicing capabilities that can refuel, maintain, and even upgrade communications satellites already in orbit, it was only a matter of time before China started to develop its own capability.

We talked about the development of the project, its tasks and goals as well as about Russia’s participation with Oleg Valerievich Kotov, pilot-cosmonaut of the Russian Federation, recipient of the Hero of the Russian Federation medal, veteran of three space missions, currently Deputy Director for Science at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Russian private company S7 Space, the launch operator of the Sea Launch platform and the Land Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, has offered Kazakhstan to use the Zenit launch vehicle.

The history of the market economy in Russia can be traced back more than a quarter of a century, but the country’s private space sector began to emerge relatively recently: most of the industry players known today joined the market only about 5 years ago.