Government

The United States and the New Zealand governments signed a Framework Agreement to provide new opportunities for the New Zealand space sector and closer collaboration with NASA, said Economic and Regional Development Minister, Stuart Nash. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and Vice President Kamala Harris, welcomed the completion of negotiations on the agreement earlier in May.

The European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centers (ESA BICs) in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia launched a new startup acceleration program, Nordic Launch, to accelerate the maturation of startups, ESA said. The pre-incubation program will bring together startups and industry expertise such as specialized technical and commercial mentors.

SpaceWatch.Global Senior Editor and SpaceCafé Italy Host Dr. Emma Gatti spoke with Elkin Norena, SLS resident manager at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, about the SLS, the rocket that will take humanity back to the moon and to Mars. Elkin discusses the Artemis 1 mission and what the agency hopes to learn from this first launch of the SLS rocket.

Khayyam, an Iranian satellite has been successfully launched into orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan along with 16 smaller Russian satellites. The Russian-built Kanopus-V Earth-observation satellite is named after Omar Khayyam, a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet.

Space communications infrastructure company, SpaceLink, has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Technical Center (USASMDC-TC) in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, SpaceLink said. The organizations will explore alternative space communications pathways together to ensure resiliency and reduce sensor-to-shooter latency.

SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Dr. Pascal Faucher, during the 6th Space Security Conference, held in Prague between the 19th and the 22nd of June 2022. Dr. Pascal Faucher is the Chairman of the European Union Consortium of Member States on Space Surveillance and Tracking since July 2017.

The Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) was conceived at UNISPACE III in 1999. The purpose of SGAC was, and remains, to support the United Nations Programme on Space Applications as a representative of university students and young space professionals ages 18-35 across the globe.

In this Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global Senior Editor and Space Café Italy Host Dr. Emma Gatti spoke with Jeremy Parsons, Deputy Manager for the Exploration Ground System Program at NASA Kennedy Space Center. In this first episode of the Artemis 1 series, Jeremy Parsons discusses his role in the NASA Artemis program that will take humanity back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

ESA and the European Commission announced the end of the mission for the Copernicus Sentinel-1B satellite, which experienced an anomaly related to the instrument electronics power supply provided by the satellite platform, leaving it unable to deliver radar data since December last year.

Dr David Parker, ESA’s Director for Human and Robotic Exploration, has named the “specially trained woolly astronaut”, Shaun the Sheep, Aardman’s family favourite TV series, as the first astronaut on the Artemis I mission to the Moon. “This is an exciting time for Shaun and for us at ESA.