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As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Orbital Gateway Consulting we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Dongfang Hour China Aerospace News Roundup 26 April - 2 May 2021” .

Luxembourg, 3 May 2021. – Brazil will launch on Virgin Orbit, the company announced. The Brazilian Space Agency (Agência Espacial Brasileira; AEB) and the Brazilian Air Force (Força Aérea Brasileira, FAB) selected Virgin Orbit “to bring orbital launch capability to Brazil, a country which has never successfully completed a domestic launch to orbit”, the company said.

This is without a doubt the best fundraising moment in history for space startups. Many experts believe that all companies will become space companies, the same way all companies are now tech companies. In 2019, a company called PitchBook published an article entitled

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present the 26th episode in our podcast series The Space Cafe Podcast: Torsten Kriening - Mastermind behind one of the fastest growing space industry news outlets. Episode 026 features a special guest Torsten Kriening. Torsten Kriening is your point of contact when you need information about whoever you want in the space industry.

Much more than a renaming: The European Union strengthens one of its main pillars to execute on its €14.88 billion space programme that the European Parliament approved on Tuesday. It transforms the European Agency for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GSA) in Prague into the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA).

The maritime geolocation startup Unseenlabs raised €20 million to build its maritime geolocation fleet, the French company said. The series B funding round is "cementing its status as a European leader in the interception of radiofrequency signals from space”, the company said.

The entrepreneur and investor Max Polyakov acquired a majority stake in the South African startup Dragonfly Aerospace, Polyakov announced. Dragonfly Aerospace was founded in Stellenbosch, South Africa, by a team of five satellite engineers led by Bryan Dean, a global specialist in microsatellites and high-resolution cameras.

Return to flight: Arianespace launched its 18th Vega mission (VV18) with Airbus’ Pleiades Neo 3 on board, the company announced yesterday. The mission marks Vega’s return to flight, Arianespace said, and was also the second successful launch by Arianespace’s teams in less than 72 hours.

During this week’s SpaceCafé, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with self-confessed “spaceist”, astronautics and space engineering expert from the International Space University, Professor Chris Welch. Now the Head of the Space Payloads Laboratory at the ISU, Professor Welch’s career in space engineering has spanned several decades across multiple universities and institutions.

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Katherine Courtney, Former UK Space Agency CEO, Chair of the Global Network on Sustainability in Space, and Founder of PrimarySpace, London, United Kingdom, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, publisher of SpaceWatch.Global.