Satellite Launch Business

Rocket Lab has continued the success of its 2018 orbital launch program with the launch of seven payloads to orbit on 11 November 2018. The mission, named ‘It’s Business Time,’ marks Rocket Lab’s second successful orbital launch and deployment of customer satellites.

Spaceflight, a satellite rideshare and mission management company, has announced that it will launch twelve satellites on board an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) later in November 2018, to include a satellite for Australian New Space company Fleet Space Technologies, who are having two satellites launched this coming week from New Zealand by Rocket Lab.

Qatar’s Es’hailsat is expected to have its Es’hail-2 communications satellite launched on Thursday, 15 November 2018, on board a SpaceX Falcon-9 satellite launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Two Kazakh satellites are due to be launched on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 satellite launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 19 November 2018, marking further milestone’s for Kazakhstan’s independent space capabilities.

Portugal is about to make a big splash in the space sector with parallel announcements covering a major cooperative programme with China, and a proposed space launch complex in the Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic ocean involving European, Russian, and U.S. company bids to build it.

MYSAT-1, an educational CubeSat built by 20 students at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is due to be launched as part of the Cygnus NG-10 resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on board a Northrop Grumman Antares launch vehicle from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, Wallops Island in the United States, on 15 November 2018.

Turkish defence contractor Rocketsan and the Turkish Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) have signed an agreement that intends to transform Turkey into a space launching state, as well as a satellite manufacturing hub, according to a 5 November 2018 report in Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah.

During a visit to Vietnam by the French Prime Minister, Jean-Yves Le Gall, the President of the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), signed a number of agreements with Vietnamese counterparts covering the French-led Space Climate Observatory (SCO), STEM education, and maritime and oceanographic surveillance.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has been ordered to pay Spacecom U.S.$10 million for the late delivery of the AMOS-6 communications satellite that ended up being destroyed in a launchpad explosion of the SpaceX Falcon 9 it was sitting upon in 2016.

Following the launch failure of LandSpace's Zhuque-1 satellite launch vehicle on 27 October 2018, the Chinese New Space launch company has publicly released its preliminary findings as to why its rocket failed 402 seconds after launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China.