Space Missions

In this Space Café Radio - SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Peter Garretson,  Senior Fellow in Defense Studies with the American Foreign Policy Council and co-director if its Space Policy Initiative, and host of the Space Strategy Podcast.  He was previously the director of Air University’s Space Horizons Task Force, an Air Force think tank for space, and was a founder and deputy director of the U.S. Space Force’s Schriever Scholars Strategy Seminar, America’s premier military space strategy program.

OffWorld has expanded into Luxembourg, appointing a former ispace CEO, Kyle Acierno, to run its European HQ. With its headquarters in Pasadena, California, OffWorld was founded in 2016 to reinvent the mining, manufacturing, and construction industries by developing a new generation of AI-powered robots able to withstand extreme conditions. It is now adapting its technology for the mining of resources in space.

Airbus Defense and Space has announced an agreement for Angeo-1, the first very high-performance Angolan Earth observation satellite, which it will develop in France. Furthermore, the agreement will strengthen the collaboration between the two countries. As part of the partnership, Airbus will offer a comprehensive training program for Angolan engineers to build domestic competencies through targeted knowledge transfer.

The Arianespace and ESA-set up independent inquiry commission has disclosed its conclusions on the reasons for the loss of the Vega-C VV22 mission after its launch in French Guiana on Tuesday, 20 December 2022. According to the Commission, after the nominal functioning of the Vega-C first stage P120C and nominal ignition of the second stage (Zefiro 40), a progressive decrease in the chamber pressure 151 seconds after lift-off led to the loss of the mission.

Spaceflight Inc. has announced it will launch two BlackSky satellites aboard Rocket Lab’s next mission called “The Beat Goes On,” from Mahia, New Zealand. U.S.-based satellite maker LeoStella manufactured the satellites, which are now in New Zealand for the final stage of integration, with co-engineering from with BlackSky. The two spacecraft onboard the mission will be the 15th and 16th satellites in BlackSky’s growing constellation.

INNOSPACE has announced that it has set a new launch window from March 7 to March 21 (Brasilia Time, BRT) for the HANBIT-TLV first test flight from Brazil soil. The test will verify the flight performance of the 15-ton thrust single-stage hybrid engine from INNOSPACE.

Shey SabripourCesiumAstro has announced that it won a contract through the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Space Development Agency (SDA) to advance the company’s multi-beam L-band active electronically scanned array (AESA) antenna. Building upon prior efforts, CesiumAstro will continue developing the Link 16–compatible AESA ahead of the agency’s migration to the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) global satellite network, the LEO-based satellite constellation built to enable key DoD space capabilities.

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Maya Glickman-Pariente - CEO, SPACECIALIST, Head of Space Operations, SAS Founder of “My space academy” - in conversation with Torsten Kriening, publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. "The next generation of space operation - do we really need humans in the loop?" As we dive deeper (or fly higher) into the era of satellite constellations, with dozens, and sometimes thousands of satellites operated simultaneously by privately owned companies, we see a wind of change in the SatOps business. This change is inevitable.

Pixxel, India’s space data startup, has unveiled the first-ever set of images from its hyperspectral pathfinder satellites as part of its ‘First Light’ Campaign. The images capture intricate details of the land and water features of regions such as Krishna River Delta (India), Palm Islands (Dubai), Super pit (Australia), Saloum River Delta (Senegal), Granny Smith Gold mine (Australia) and Brockman (Australia).

Rocket Lab has announced that it has doubled its order backlog from about $241 million in contracts at the end of 2021 to $503.6 million at the end of 2022 and made progress on the Neutron rocket that it's developing, according to CNBC.