Policy and Law

The President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Aleksandr Sergeyev, has stated that Russia intends to build a group of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) Earth observation satellites with assistance from the space and satellite industry of Belarus, according to Belarusian news agency BELTA.

The U.S. Congress has formally acknowledged India's NAVIC global navigation satellite system (GNSS) to be an "allied system" in its finalized 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the legislative bill that outlines the U.S. Department of Defense's budget, policies, and priorities for the coming fiscal year.

The 8th African Leadership Conference on Space Science and Technology for Sustainable Development was hosted at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, in Ethiopia from the 2nd to the 4th December 2019. Over 200 participants joined the conference from 31 countries, 21 of which were African countries.

The member states of the BRICS economic bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – are in the midst of negotiating a mutually beneficial framework that will allow each country to access certain Earth observation satellites from each other, according to various press reports.

The President of the French national space agency, the Centre national d'études spatiales   (CNES), Jean-Yves Le Gall, visited Dakar, Senegal, on 12 December 2019 to take part in the commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA).

Following nearly two years of collaboration on terrestrial surveillance between the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) and Aireon, the two organizations have concluded the use of space-based ADS-B for surveillance services beginning 1 January 2020 within the six flight information regions (FIRs) of ASECNA: Antananarivo, Brazzaville, Dakar Terrestrial, Dakar Oceanic, N'djamena and Niamey.

OneWeb, whose goal is to connect everyone everywhere, and OneWeb Satellites, a joint venture between Airbus and OneWeb are coming together to advance the OneWeb Responsible Space program with a commitment to implement an advanced-technology grappling fixture, developed by Altius Space Machines, on OneWeb's satellites.

SpaceWatch.Global's Torsten Kriening took the opportunity to speak with Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Schrogl, President of the International Institute for Space Law (IISL), to discover more about the current challenges in space traffic management.

SpaceWatch.Global's Torsten Kriening took the opportunity to speak with Dr. Jana Robinson, Space Security Programme Director at the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI), at the ESPI Autumn Conference 2019 in Vienna, to discover more about the organisation’s ambitions in space. 

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Prof. Mai’a K. Davis Cross, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts.