Space Exploration

Insurance company Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSI), a subsidiary of MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, has reached an agreement with global lunar resource development company ispace, to provide the world's first Lunar Insurance policy covering risks arising from ispace's Mission 1, ispace said.

In this episode of Space Cafè Radio Editor in Chief Dr. Emma Gatti spoke with Dr. Valanathan Munsami, the Senior Advisor to the CEO of the Saudi Space Agency. This interview took place during the Connecting the World from the Skies forum, which was held in Riyadh from the 8th to the 10th of November 2022. The conference was hosted by the International Telecommunication Union and the Communications, Space & Technology Commission of Saudi Arabia with the theme being “connecting the unconnected”. Important indications of where Saudi Arabia wants to situate itself within the global Space economy, the directions it wants to follow, the vision it would like to cultivate, and the investment it intends to pursue, were showcased. 

SpaceX was awarded a NASA contract modification, Option B, to further develop its Starship human landing system to meet agency requirements for long-term human exploration of the Moon as part of the Artemis program, NASA said. According to the modification, SpaceX will conduct a second crewed landing demonstration in 2027 as part of the Artemis IV mission.

Satellite-based solutions provider Terran Orbital, successfully launched Moon-mapping satellite, LunIR (Lunar Infrared Imaging). This is the second Terran Orbital-developed lunar satellite to launch this year after CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment). CAPSTONE entered a Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit around the Moon just days ago after its launch in June. Both spacecraft support NASA’s Artemis program.

NASA successfully launched Artemis I, comprising its Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket in the world, with the uncrewed Orion spacecraft aboard, which is on its way to cislunar orbit as part of the Artemis program, NASA said. During its 25.5-day space trip, Orion will travel approximately 64,000 km beyond the Moon before returning to Earth.

The Terran Orbital-developed CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) spacecraft successfully arrived in a Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the Moon, the satellite product manufacturer said. The successful orbit insertion is the first step of the pathfinding lunar mission’s next phase.

Canadensys Aerospace, a space systems company, has announced it has received a contract from the Canadian Government to design and build Canada’s first lunar rover. Initiated under the Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), the lunar rover will demonstrate key technologies for future lunar activity and accomplish meaningful lunar science.

In this Space Café Radio - SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with  Philippe Bertrand, Chairman of the Security Accreditation Board at EUSPA - EU Agency for the Space Programme. In May 2022, Philippe Bertrand was elected as the Chairman of the Security Accreditation Board (SAB) of the EU Space Programme. An independent body within EUSPA, SAB is the security accreditation authority for all of the EU Space Programme’s components.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) have renewed their partnership in lunar exploration with the groundbreaking of a new communications facility that will help the Artemis missions return humans to the Moon. The ceremony came after the signing of a Letter of Intent between NASA and the South African Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) to formalize the space exploration partnership.

The entrepreneurial support process in the space sector follows often the same development path starting with the ideation process, going to incubation, and then followed by acceleration and scale-up. While the sequence is clear, each step along this chain of entrepreneurship has its dynamic set of actors as well as key characteristics. For these reasons, there is not a single approach that would apply to all contexts to successfully launch a space business, but one element is clear: the ideation phase is critical because this is where the new concepts emerge.