Tag Archives: Satellite Launch

Qatar’s Es’hailsat is expected to have its Es’hail-2 communications satellite launched on Thursday, 15 November 2018, on board a SpaceX Falcon-9 satellite launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Two Kazakh satellites are due to be launched on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 satellite launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 19 November 2018, marking further milestone’s for Kazakhstan’s independent space capabilities.

Portugal is about to make a big splash in the space sector with parallel announcements covering a major cooperative programme with China, and a proposed space launch complex in the Azores islands in the mid-Atlantic ocean involving European, Russian, and U.S. company bids to build it.

Turkish defence contractor Rocketsan and the Turkish Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) have signed an agreement that intends to transform Turkey into a space launching state, as well as a satellite manufacturing hub, according to a 5 November 2018 report in Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah.

During a visit to Vietnam by the French Prime Minister, Jean-Yves Le Gall, the President of the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), signed a number of agreements with Vietnamese counterparts covering the French-led Space Climate Observatory (SCO), STEM education, and maritime and oceanographic surveillance.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has been ordered to pay Spacecom U.S.$10 million for the late delivery of the AMOS-6 communications satellite that ended up being destroyed in a launchpad explosion of the SpaceX Falcon 9 it was sitting upon in 2016.

Following the launch failure of LandSpace's Zhuque-1 satellite launch vehicle on 27 October 2018, the Chinese New Space launch company has publicly released its preliminary findings as to why its rocket failed 402 seconds after launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China.

U.S. New Space orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has confirmed the launch window for the upcoming ‘It’s Business Time’ mission. The nine-day launch window will open from 11 to 19 November 2018 (NZDT), with daily launch opportunities between 16:00 – 20:00 NZDT (03:00 – 07:00 UTC).

Japan's New Space scene is little known and understood outside of Tokyo, despite the emergence of some interesting startups such as iSpace and Infostellar to name just two as well as some big Japanese government announcements about supporting startups in the space sector. SpaceWatch.Global reached out to Masashi Sato, a Senior Consultant at the Nomura Research Institute Ltd. (NRI) in Tokyo and a leading expert on the Japanese space startup scene, to find out what the current state of play is and what the future holds.

The head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), Morteza Barari, announced in early October 2018 that three Iranian-made satellites - Payam-e Amirkabir-1, Dousti, and Nahid-1 - have been built and are ready to be launched, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).