Government

The Chinese government has provided Egypt with a U.S.$45 million grant for the completion of the EgyptSat-2 Earth observation satellite. The grant was given at a signing ceremony held in Cairo on 13 August 2018 involving Egyptian Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Sahar Nasr and the Chinese ambassador to …

Russian Soyuz rockets will be launched from the European Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana on November 6 and December 14, 2018, a source in the rocket and space industry outed to RIA Novosti. The Soyuz-ST-B and Soyuz-ST-A launch vehicles built by the Progress Rocket Space Centre in Samara with …

The Turkish minister for Science, Industry, and Technology, Mustafa Varank, said on 7 August 2018 that the Turkish government will establish the Turkish Space Agency this year in order to coordinate the country’s space activities and manage international cooperation and relations. “The Turkish Space Agency will be founded this year …

Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Airbus Defence and Space that allows both parties to cooperate on space and satellite areas of interest, according to a report published in SpaceTechAsia.com. Areas of possible interest for cooperation between Vietnam and Airbus include …

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. According to the new technique, nanosatellites will be delivered to orbit in the transfer compartment of …

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. The announcement was made on 5 August 2018 after Etisalat, the largest telecommunications …

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Oman in February 2018 has resulted in the release of a joint statement by Muscat and New Delhi identifying space as one of several sectors in which the two nations could collaborate. As a result of Modi’s visit earlier this year, a Memorandum …

Prelaunch preparations are underway to ready KhalifaSat for launch into orbit before the end of the year from a launch facility in Japan aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H-IIA satellite launch vehicle, according to the Director-General of the UAE Space Agency. Khalifasat is the first satellite to be wholly …

Azercosmos, the national space agency of Azerbaijan, and the French space agency, the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), have signed a space cooperation agreement which focuses specifically on collaboration in Earth observation. This agreement gives fresh impetus to the Azerbaijani space programme, which gained momentum last year when Azercosmos was …

The French national space agency, the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), and the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), met earlier in July 2018 to discuss working together within the framework of the Space Climate Observatory (SCO) and bilateral space cooperation in space launch and the development of Korean positioning, navigation, …