Satellite

by Steven Freeland and Francois Lambert Later this month, on 26 June, a flurry of companies will make their final bids to acquire OneWeb, Greg Wyler’s prised space start-up. The winning bidder could be a private company, perhaps backed by a major space power. Whoever is successful will have the opportunity …

In this week’s Space Cafe Web Talk, Dr. Regina Peldszus and Marc Becker, of DLR Space Administration discussed the concept of ‘dual-use’: how space technologies enable both civilian and military applications.  The discussion highlighted key issues at this complex intersection for both domains and addressed policy discourse on the future …

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and the European Space Policy Institute, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and briefs. This is ESPI Briefs No. 41: ‘Questions raised by the Covid-19 crisis for the European space sector’, originally published in May 2020. 1. Space put to use for crisis …

The Secretary for Defense released the Defense Space Strategy, which identifies how Department of Defense will advance spacepower to be able to compete, deter, and win in a complex security environment characterized by great power competition. “The Defense Space Strategy is the next step to ensure space superiority and to …

Momentus, provider of in-space transportation services for satellites, and EnduroSat, the European designer of spacecraft for business applications and space exploration missions, announced two separate service agreements. The 6U and 1U CubeSats will launch February 2021 on the second Vigoride demo mission onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Shared …

Australia is increasingly keen on greater independence in spaceflight. The University of Queensland and Gilmour Space are moving forward on a domestically-made “next-generation” hybrid rocket that could start launching satellites into low Earth orbit in 2022. Crucially, all the rockets and components would be made in Australia — they wouldn’t …

Edinburgh-based Skyrora successfully launched its Skylark Nano rocket from remote land, the Fethaland Peninsula at North Roe on the Scottish island on Saturday, the 13th of June.  Skyrora plans to launch from one of the three proposed spaceports in Scotland and commercially launching from Shetland in the future is a …

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and the European Space Policy Institute, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and briefs. This is ESPI Briefs No. 38: ‘In-Orbit Servicing: Challenges and Implications of an Emerging Capability’, originally published in February 2020. 1. In-Orbit Servicing Capabilities In-Orbit Servicing (IOS) encompasses a …

The Commission announced 16 pan-European defence industrial projects and three disruptive technology projects that will benefit from €205 million financing through the two precursor programmes of a fully-fledged European Defence Fund: the Preparatory Action on Defence Research (PADR) and the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP). Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe …

The Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) platform now has operational analysis-ready Earth observation (EO) data over Africa, using free and open images captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellites. This is the first ever continuously updated satellite data at the continental scale for Africa. Digital Earth Africa has …