Satellite

The Space Data Association (SDA) has appointed Erika Rossetto of Embratel StarOne and Lorenzo Arona of Avanti Communications as Standard Member Directors. This is the second consecutive term for Rossetto, while Arona is returning after holding the position from 2019 to 2021.

Neuraspace, a European-born space traffic management (STM), has joined NVIDIA Inception, a program that nurtures startups revolutionizing industries with artificial intelligence (AI). NVIDIA Inception will allow Neuraspace to get faster access to cutting-edge AI-related technology and best-in-class tools while enhancing its existing AI system. Furthermore, it will optimize Neuraspace’s research and development efforts to apply AI to its operational STM system.

Hisdesat, the Spanish Government satellite operator, has announced that the first satellite in the SPAINSAT NG program, SpainSat NG-I, will be ready for launch in the summer of 2024 after confirming that the program is making good progress. Space X will be responsible for launching the Spanish satellite into orbit with a Falcon 9 launcher from its base at Cape Canaveral or from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

In this Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global's Dr. Emma Gatti spoke with Tim Maclay, the chief strategy officer and US general manager at ClearSpace, an in-orbiting service and space debris company founded in 2018. Today's episode is in partnership with the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on the long-term sustainability of outer space and earth orbits, as well as space security and stability considerations.

Aeolus, the European Space Agency (ESA)’s wind mission, reentered Earth’s atmosphere on 28 July at around 21:00 CEST above Antarctica, with the US Space Command confirming the reentry. The reentry came after a series of complex maneuvers that lowered Aeolus’ orbit from an altitude of 320 km to just 120 km to reenter the atmosphere and burn up. Crucially, these maneuvers, the first assisted reentry of its kind, positioned Aeolus so that any pieces that may have failed to burn up in the atmosphere would fall within the satellite’s planned Atlantic ground tracks.

The European Space Agency's Galileo Project has launched its new Telemetry, Tracking, and Control (TT&C) facility, featuring a 13.5-meter diameter parabola dish on top of a 10-meter-high building structure of steel and concrete. Known as the acronym TTCF-7, the facility is within the premises of Europe’s launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, beside its older sibling TTCF-2.

In this Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global's Dr. Emma Gatti  spoke with Piotr Sitek,  governmental and new components, security governance officer in the security authority department of EUSPA. This radio episode is part of a joint collaboration between SpaceWatch.Global and EUSPA, the EU Agency for the Space Programme.

Pixxel has won a multi-crore grant from iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence under the Ministry of Defence) for the Mission DefSpace Challenge under iDEX Prime (Space) to manufacture miniaturized multi-payload satellites for the Indian Air Force. Oixxel received this grant as part of the SPARK grants by iDEX. As a result, this grant will equip Pixxel to develop small satellites of up to 150 kgs for Electro-Optical, Infrared, Synthetic Aperture Radar, and Hyper Spectral purposes. 

A project led by the University of Oxford has trained a machine learning model in outer space, on board a satellite. A group of researchers led by DPhil student Vit Růžička participated in the project. During 2022, the team successfully pitched their idea to the ‘Dashing through the Stars’ mission, which had issued a call for project proposals to be carried out on board the ION SCV004 satellite, launched in January 2022.  

The Cook Government announced on the 25th of July that it has invested $800,000 to advance the State’s Earth Observation (EO) capabilities through the collection, processing, analysis and application of high-resolution satellite data.