Government

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.

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 can step in.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will deliver five ground stations and a total of 500 Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT) to enable its neighbours to benefit from satellite-based services such as TV, Internet, telephone, disaster management, and telemedicine.

The Indian government is considering building a constellation of communications satellite is low-Earth and Medium-Earth orbits (LEO and MEO) in order to provide improved connectivity across the country with reduced latency, as the South Asian country seeks to be the latest entity to build a large constellation of satellites, albeit the first to do so as a government programme.

As Iran makes preparation to launch three satellites using Iranian launch vehicles, the United States has warned Tehran not to conduct the launches and condemned the Iranian space programme as a deceptive measure that in reality is designed to help build long-range ballistic missiles.

Ethiopia's state-owned telecommunications provider, Ethio Telecom, is considering acquiring a communications satellite in order to provide connectivity to rural Ethiopia as well as to economic sectors in the northeast African country that will benefit from telecommunications infrastructure, such as agriculture and mining, according to a news story published in Ethiopian news outlet The Reporter.

Paradigm has become a pioneer of satellite antenna systems and brings over three decades of experience to the market. The company has made a great impact in terms of making systems less complex and easy to operate in even the most remote and hostile locations. In this exclusive interview, Paradigm CEO, Ulf Sandberg, tells Helen Jameson about its huge contribution to market sectors such as military and government, media broadcasting and exploration with its ultra-portable rapid-setup VSATs and multiband earth stations.

The Indian government is likely to introduce the 2017 Space Activities Bill, which will allow the commercial use of space in India, in the 2019 budget session, according to a report in the Hindustan Times.

The deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, announced on 29 December 2018 that Iranian experts have successfully built radars capable of monitoring satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), according Iranian news reporting.

The Indian government announced on 28 December 2018 that its Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission expected to take place in 2022 will consist of three crew members, last for five to seven days in orbit, and is budgeted for the equivalent of U.S.$1.43 billion, according to Indian media reports.