Government

It has been announced that the UAE Space Agency is building three satellites that will help to address climate change and other scientific challenges. The news broke during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, where the focus of the event is to further our understanding of the major social, economic and technology …

Airbus Defense and Space Inc. has been awarded a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a satellite bus in support of the Blackjack program. DARPA describes the Blackjack program as an architecture demonstration intending to show the military utility of global low-earth orbit constellations and …

Kleos Space S.A. reports that the company’s first cluster of satellites has entered the Integration Phase after successfully undergoing Critical Design Review (CDR) with Gomspace A/S. The CDR ensured the satellites could proceed towards assembly, validation, integration and testing and confirms they meet stated performance cost, schedule, and risk requirements. …

Roscosmos head, Dmitry Rogozin has announced that Russia will construct Sovereign’s Eye (‘Gosudarevo Oko’), a new constellation of remote sensing satellites that will enable them to identify any changes that are happening on Earth. Rogozin highlighted that the new initiative will enable Russian to strengthen its Digital Economy programme, which …

The Japanese government is to begin use of a quasi-zenith satellite system to provide a failover solution for support of its Self Defence Force (SDF) in the event of a malfunction on the U.S. GPS system. This move comes amid fears that China and Russia and their development of anti-satellite …

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) views space warfare as an important component of its concept of war, and is developing a range of capabilities and tactics to carry out space operations, as well as bolstering its organizational and command and control capacity to enable such operations, according to the U.S. …

SIAP, the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food – part of the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture (SAGARPA) – has signed a declaration of intent with the UK Space Agency to provide historic, statistical and satellite data to support Rezatec’s development of a crop yield optimisation tool for …

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani struck a defiant note on 11 January 2019 when he countered the U.S. threat of consequences should his government carry out the launch of two satellites using an Iranian satellite launch vehicle. “Today, our rockets are defensive means and a source of our pride. We will …

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited London and Paris as part of an effort to strengthen Tokyo’s ties with Western intelligence in order to counter increasing Chinese military and espionage activities throughout the Asia-Pacific region. These visits to the United Kingdom and France have been coupled with greater engagement …

By Dr. John B. Sheldon The role of commercial space in today’s national security environments is known well enough. There are useful policy debates to be had over what national security space systems a state should absolutely provide for to ensure sovereign decision making in war versus where commercial entities …