Government

Russian scientists, with the support of the Russian government, intend to place a number of ground-based observatories in the Nenets Autonomous Region on Russia’s Northwest Arctic Ocean coast for the purposes of providing space situational awareness (SSA) of satellites and space debris in Polar orbits as the pass over the …

As part of significant defence reforms being proposed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia is considering the creation of a Cyber Security and Space Force, that if implemented, will operate under the command of the Ethiopian military. The proposed reforms also call for the creation of an Ethiopian naval base, …

China and Russia have signed a cooperative agreement on 7 November 2018 covering their respective global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), BeiDou and GLONASS. The agreement was one of a number of energy and trade deals signed by Chinese Premier Le Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during a visit …

Portugal is about to make a big splash in the space sector with parallel announcements covering a major cooperative programme with China, and a proposed space launch complex in the Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic ocean involving European, Russian, and U.S. company bids to build it. The cooperative programme with …

Turkish defence contractor Rocketsan and the Turkish Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) have signed an agreement that intends to transform Turkey into a space launching state, as well as a satellite manufacturing hub, according to a 5 November 2018 report in Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah. According to a statement released …

During a visit to Vietnam by the French Prime Minister, Jean-Yves Le Gall, the President of the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), signed a number of agreements with Vietnamese counterparts covering the French-led Space Climate Observatory (SCO), STEM education, and maritime and oceanographic surveillance. “The Prime Minister’s official visit to …

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has been ordered to pay Spacecom U.S.$10 million for the late delivery of the AMOS-6 communications satellite that ended up being destroyed in a launchpad explosion of the SpaceX Falcon 9 it was sitting upon in 2016. The announcement was made in a filing with the …

Japan launched its own satellite positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system called Michibiki  on Thursday, 1 November 2018, as part of an effort to generate new businesses worth nearly 5 trillion yen (U.S.$44.4 billion) by 2025, as companies such as SoftBank Group, Mitsubishi Electric, and Hitachi develop applications in automated …

PASCO, a Japanese provider of satellite-based geospatial information, has signed an agreement to distribute data and images acquired by the ALOS-2 Earth observation (EO) satellite which is owned by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). As part of this agreement, PASCO will start selling a new InSAR Package service to …

The head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), Morteza Barari, announced in early October 2018 that three Iranian-made satellites – Payam-e Amirkabir-1, Dousti, and Nahid-1 – have been built and are ready to be launched, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Morteza Berari made the announcement at a …