Government

The Syrian Minister of Communications and Technology, Iyad Khatib, has stated the need for Syria to develop a space programme and launch its first satellite into orbit, the ministry said on 11 December 2018, according to Russian news outlet Sputnik International. The minister visited a Syrian space research organisation called …

Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has announced that it would be extending its Earth observation capabilities by acquiring Australia’s first CubeSat designed to detect invisible infrared light. To be known as CSIROSat-1, the new satellite will allow researchers from CSIRO and other institutions …

India and Japan have scheduled their first annual bilateral space dialogue in March 2019, where they will discuss cooperation and coordination on a range of civil and national security space issues,  ranging from space-based maritime domain awareness and satellite reconnaissance through to the harmonization of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) …

Legislators in the Philippines Congress have passed key legislation that will establish the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA), placing the organisation in charge of developing, running, and promoting the Southeast Asian country’s national space programme. On 4 December 2018, the House of Representatives approved House Bill (HB) 8541 on its third …

Gilat, the Israeli satellite communications equipment company, has been selected by the Local Authorities Satellite Communications (LASCOM), an agency of the Japanese government, to help provide a disaster response emergency communications platform along with the SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. This multi-million-dollar project will deliver a next-generation disaster response platform to …

Saudi Arabia’s Earth observation satellites, SaudiSat-5A and SaudiSat-5B, were successfully launched on board a Long March 2D launch vehicle on Friday, 7 December 2018, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre (JSLC) in Northwest China at 04:12 UTC. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) developed and manufactured …

Algeria’s space agency, the Agence spatiale algérienne (ASAL), the Algerian space is actively considering building a second communications satellite, Alcomsat-2, to replace Alcomsat-1 at the end of its service life in orbit. During the ASAL open house organised on 3-4 December 2018, its managing director Azzedine Oussedik revealed that the agency’s …

Azerbaijan and Iran have concluded negotiations on space cooperation, to include the Iranian use of Azerbaijani communications satellites and the joint development of a remote sensing satellite, according Azerbaijani media reports. “We are currently holding negotiations on Iran’s use of satellites belonging to Azerbaijan. In addition, Iran has a satellite …

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), has announced that it has signed two contracts with Korea, one with Aerospace Industries, LTD. (KAI), and one with Hanwha Systems Corporation (HSC), to develop a constellation of high-resolution observation radar satellites for the Agency for Defence Development  …

The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) awarded GeoNorth Information Systems (GNIS) a five-year, U.S.$15 million contract for persistent surveillance services of the Arctic region. Lockheed Martin will provide a scalable geospatial processing platform to enable the surveillance project. GNIS will leverage Lockheed Martin’s Rosetta technology, which includes a versatile and …