Satellite Launch Business

This week’s Space Café WebTalk took place on 21 April 2020, featuring Dr. Brian Weeden, Director of Program Planning for Secure World Foundation in conversation with Torsten Kriening, co-publisher of SpaceWatch.Global and COO of ThorGroup GmbH. Dr. Brian Weeden gave a briefing about key elements from the newly released 2020 Global …

Magellan Aerospace Corporation announced on 16 April 2020 that it would provide Black Brant sounding rocket motors to The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. or “DLR”) estimated to generate revenue of up to US$9.4 million over the term of the agreement. The DLR is the …

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that it had launched a military satellite on the morning (Iranian time) of 22 April 2020 on board a previously unknown satellite launch vehicle the IRGC calls Qassed. The military satellite, called Noor (also spelled ‘Nur’ and ‘Nour’ – Farsi for ‘Light’), could …

Singapore’s Equatorial Space announced on 17 April 2020 that it has signed a letter of intent to work with Scottish launch aggregator Responsive Access, on finding customers for launches of its small satellite launch vehicle. The company’s fully hybrid launch vehicle, Volans, is being designed to carry up to 200kg …

By Roger McDermott This essay was originally published by the Eurasia Daily Monitor of  The Jamestown Foundation on 8 April 2020, and is republished here with their kind permission. The original essay can be found here. In December 2019, President Donald Trump formally created the United States Space Force, a …

Marubeni Corporation, Interstellar Technologies Inc., and D-Orbit SpA have recently signed a Letter of Intent to study the development of an agile satellite release system to be mounted on the small satellite launch vehicle named “ZERO”. Marubeni started its business collaboration with IST in 2016. Since then, Marubeni has commissioned …

European launch vehicle manufacturer Isar Aerospace announced its expansion into new production facilities in Germany’s space valley in Ottobrunn/Taufkirchen near Munich. The new 4,500 sqm. space will be used for manufacturing and assembly of fully integrated orbital launch vehicles as well as system testing. Isar Aerospace is driving technological innovation …

Rocket Lab has signed a deal with Japanese satellite company Synspective to launch a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite in late 2020. The signing was announced on 14 April 2020. Synspective’s StriX-α satellite will be launched on an Electron launch vehicle as a dedicated mission from Launch Complex 1 in …

Berlin-based Exolaunch, a leading launch services and deployment system provider for small satellites, revealed on 14 April 2020 that it has signed a rideshare launch services agreement with SpaceX. According to Space News, Exolaunch has arranged for the launch of over 100 satellites for various customers over recent years, but has …

Three Proton-M launch vehicles have been returned from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to their manufacturer in Moscow after newly introduced Roscosmos quality control measures found defective components and parts in them. The three launch vehicles were found to have defective components and parts that were believed to have been …