Tag Archives: Nasa

Summer is upon us, and as our gaze shifts towards the stars during those warm, clear nights, SpaceWatch.Global brings you its second collection or the Summer Listening Series. Based on the vote by our newsroom, we have mapped out an interstellar journey across five categories. This week we are starting with “Climate, Space and Earth.”

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has announced it has signed a new launch services agreement with a confidential customer for a HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) mission. The mission will consequently launch from Complex 2 at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in 2024. The contract signing with the new customer came just days after Rocket Lab successfully launched the first HASTE mission on 17 June 2023 for Leidos under the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program.

ICEYE US Inc has received its first Task Order under a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with NASA, enabling NASA to acquire ICEYE’s synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data for evaluation by scientific and academic communities. This will help to determine suitability for advancing NASA’s Earth Science research objectives. The BPA gets its funding from the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate. Since 2020, NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program has been identifying, evaluating, and acquiring data from commercial sources that align with NASA’s Earth Science Division objectives.

NASA and Axiom Space have signed a mission order for the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS), marking the Houston-based company as the only full-service mission provider to carry out end-to-end commercial astronaut missions to the orbiting laboratory.

Summer is upon us, and as our gaze shifts towards the stars during those warm, clear nights, SpaceWatch.Global brings to you its new Summer Listening Series. Based on a vote by our esteemed team members, we have mapped out an interstellar journey across five captivating categories. This week, we're launching with the ever-fascinating realm of the "Moon and Exploration."

The moment the decommissioned ISS burns through re-entry and plunges into the Pacific Ocean will be heart-breaking. Granted, we will still have the Chinese Tiangong space station as a symbol of governmental and entrepreneurial prowess. But once the (American) private sector is solely in charge of orbital space stations other than Chinese ones, albeit with some friends and allies governments support as anchor customers, what will happen with global micro-G accessibility?

Dr. Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist, and senior climate advisor, has become co-chair of a working group on climate change mitigation at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is the United Nations body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change. Prior to the selection, Calvin contributed to five reports by the IPCC.

Voyager Space and Airbus Defence and Space announced on the 2nd of August a new agreement to pave the way to develop, build, and operate Starlab, a commercial space station planned to succeed the International Space Station. The US-led joint venture will bring together world-class leaders in the space domain, while further uniting American and European interests in space exploration. 

Hisdesat, the Spanish Government satellite operator, has announced that the first satellite in the SPAINSAT NG program, SpainSat NG-I, will be ready for launch in the summer of 2024 after confirming that the program is making good progress. Space X will be responsible for launching the Spanish satellite into orbit with a Falcon 9 launcher from its base at Cape Canaveral or from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Argentina has become the 28th signatory to the Artemis Accords, signing the document at a ceremony at the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires on Thursday, July 27, 2023. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson participated in the signing ceremony for NASA, and Daniel Filmus, Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation, signed on behalf of Argentina. Argentine President Alberto Fernández and Marc Stanley, the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, also were in attendance.