Satellite Launch Business

During this week’s Space Café, SpaceWatch.Global Publisher Torsten Kriening had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Josef Aschbacher, Director General at the European Space Agency (ESA) and as a special guest, Dr. Alexander Gerst, ESA Astronaut about "Ambitions for the future of Europe in Space - Agenda 2025"  live

Low Earth orbit satellite communications company OneWeb, announced it entered into an agreement with SpaceX to resume OneWeb’s satellite launch programme. The terms of the agreement are confidential. The first launch is scheduled for this year, adding to OneWeb’s 428-satellite in-orbit constellation, which makes up 66% of the fleet.

Australian launch service provider Southern Launch, and not-for-profit organisation for the advancement of the engineering field within Australia, Engineers Australia, have signed a service level agreement to boost the careers of the company’s engineering team.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and The Strategist, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles. This is “Australia needs to aim high with space strategic update” by Malcolm Davis, originally published on 11 March 2022. Last week at the 13th Australian Space Forum in Adelaide, the minister for science and technology, Melissa Price, 

The German Bundeswehr (Federal Defense) has awarded Polaris a contract to build and flight-test a scaled demonstrator of its Aurora space launch and hypersonic system, Polaris reported. The vehicle is a downscaled version of the future spaceplane powered by a reusable liquid-fuel rocket engine.

ESA announced the suspension of the ExoMars programme in alignment with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States. ESA’s ruling Council assessed the situation that the war in Ukraine caused with regards to ExoMars, and came to a unanimous decision. The Council came to the conclusion that it was impossible to keep cooperating with Roscosmos on the ExoMars rover mission.

A new €1 billion fund called “Cassini” was announced at the last European Space Conference, this fund will help to boost start-ups and space innovation, including supporting the plans for a more comprehensive strategy on developing European space launch vehicles.

Astra launched its Rocket 3.3 vehicle from Alaska on Kodiak Island, successfully placing several payloads into sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 525 km. An attempt the previous day had to be cancelled due to bad weather conditions. The liftoff and ascent went as planned, however, there was no immediate confirmation of payload separation.

The world's largest cargo plane by length and weight was severely damaged when Russians attacked Gostomel airport near Kyiv, Ukraine reported. The aircraft was used to transport Ariane rocket components, airlift aid during crises in other countries and transport medical supplies.

Bharti Enterprises, OneWeb’s largest shareholder said that bringing manufacturing into the UK would be problematic, despite the government’s ambitions to stimulate a domestic space industry. Sunil Bharti Mittal, chair of Bharti Enterprises, said that they would encourage the winner of the contract for OneWeb’s second-generation satellites to manufacture in the UK but there were no guarantees.