Tag Archives: China

The first half of 2019 has already proven to be a worthy time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon. With China’s Chang'e-4 mission to the far side of the Moon in January and its proactive approach to create a permanent Moon Base, Israel’s private lunar mission in February – which has paved the way for commercial lunar missions, India’s very first mission to the south pole, expected to be launched in September, and NASA’s U.S.$2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Service program and the American ambitions to send humans back to the Moon by 2024, the Moon race is on.

China has successfully launched a further satellite to augment its Beidou satellite navigation system on 17 May. Beidou-2G8  was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan Province on a Long March -3C/G2 launch vehicle.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of the French national space agency - the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), opened the International Affairs Seminar at the agency’s head office in Paris on 13 May 2019.

Representatives of Japan's Hokkaido University recently visited Myanmar to discuss the possibility of building a small Earth observation satellite with counterparts at the Myanmar Aerospace Engineering University, according to an English-language report in the Myanmar press.

Japan's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed that it will assign 100 military personnel to its Space Domain Mission Unit that is expected to be stood up by Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 and will based at the Fuchu Air Base, operated by the Japanese Air Self-Defence Force (JASDF), west of Tokyo.

Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd., a worldwide leader in satellite networking technology, solutions and services, announced on 13 May 2019 that Honeywell has selected Gilat’s Taurus IFC modem for its JetWave™ satellite communication system.

With space nations such as China and the United States forging ahead with ambitious plans, where does Europe stand in the global space community? Can Europe successfully compete and is there a willingness to collaborate with other nations? Torsten Kriening sat down with Jean-Jacques Tortora, Director of the European Space Policy Institute, to pose some key questions.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and the European Space Policy Institute, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and briefs. This is ESPI Briefs No. 28: ‘China is One Step Closer to the Moon… and Europe?’, originally published in January 2019.

WattTime, an American not-for-profit fighting climate change, announced on 7 May 2019 a new project, funded by a U.S.$1.7 million grant from Google.org, which will use a global network of satellites to measure carbon emissions from all large power plants worldwide and render the information public.

The UK's long awaited defence space strategy has been leaked to The Times, one of Britain's leading newspapers, and reveals a growing acknowledgement of threats against satellites by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and hints at the development and procurement of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) satellites.