SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit organization working to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon, is pleased to announce that they will host the last annual Team Summit for the Google Lunar XPRIZE. The Team Summit will take place in Tel Aviv, kicking off on 31 August 2016. For the …
Read More »Algeria’s AlSat-Nano prepared for early September launch from India
Algeria’s AlSat-Nano is being readied for launch sometime between late August and early September 2016 from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Satish Dhawan Space Centre, in Andhra Pradesh on the eastern coast of India. AlSat-Nano is sharing the launch into orbit on an ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) …
Read More »Kuwait mulling development of a national satellite capability
The Kuwaiti cabinet, the Council of Ministers, is considering the acquisition and launch of a satellite, according to local reports in Kuwait City. Draft legislation has been submitted to the cabinet from the Communications and Information Technology Commission. The reports say that the cabinet has formed a committee to examine …
Read More »The New Asian Space Race
Asia is home to three established space powers – Japan, China and India – and there are several new players, some with rising aspirations of reaching the Moon, thus giving way to a new competition in Asia. The fact that six of the ten countries – China, India, Iran, Israel, …
Read More »How Satellites Secure the Border
Satelites make a better World, by the Society of Satellite Professionals International: It can literally be a line in the sand or a fence made of concertina wire. A guard outpost on a busy road. A strip of unoccupied beach. A patch of trackless forest. A river snaking its way …
Read More »The Spectacular Rise of the UAE Space Agency and the Challenges Ahead
Where does the UAE Space Agency go after the Hope Mars Mission is achieved after 2021? Building and sustaining success, and therefore public and political support, is a challenge for all space agencies. The solutions to this challenge, however, can only be found in the United Arab Emirates. ThorGroup’s Chairman …
Read More »Past alien civilizations and other readings that have caught our attention this past week…
It has been yet another busy week of insightful and inspiring stories and reporting around the world. As editors of SpaceWatch Middle East the challenge is whittling down the quantity of good stuff out there to a handful of readings to share with our readers! This week’s selection includes an …
Read More »Es’hailSat’s Es’hail-2 undergoes vacuum chamber test in Japan
Executives from Qatar’s Es’hailSat and Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Space Systems (MELCO) gathered in Kamakura, outside of Tokyo, Japan, to observe the vacuum chamber test of Es’hail-2. MELCO, who were awarded the contract to build Es’hail-2 in 2014, hosted their Qatari clients on 4 June 2016. Es’hail-2 is based on MELCO’s …
Read More »Iran’s defence minister wrongly claims independence from GPS
Iran’s defence minister, Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, has claimed that Iran has created a Local Positioning System (LPS) making Iran independent from any reliance on the US Global Positioning System (GPS). Brigadier General Dehghan told Iranian journalists that LPS consists of five high-powered transmitters located around Iran that can provide …
Read More »Lockheed Martin reveals details of future GPS III capabilities
The Middle East is set to benefit from multiple global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) currently under development by China, India, Europe, Russia, and the United States. The United States especially is a global GNSS powerhouse, and US aerospace company Lockheed Martin is developing the next generation US GNSS capability, Global …
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