Tag Archives: Space Policy

Japanese company ANA Holdings, best known for operating All Nippon Airlines, and trading house Marubeni Corporation have partnered to build a spaceport in Japan as early as 2021, according to a report in the Nikkei Asian Review. The spaceport will be used for private space travel, such as space tourism, …

The UAE Space Agency will continue selecting astronaut candidates in order to create a national astronaut cadre with the aim of sending Emiratis in to orbit annually, Dr. Mohammed Al Ahbabi, the Director General of the agency, said in an interview with Russian news outlet Sputnik.

Following revelations in September 2018 by French defence minister Florence Parly that Russian reconnaissance satellites had maneuvered close to the Athena-Fidus Franco-Italian communications satellite in 2017 in a suspected act of espionage, the French Joint Space Command and the Ministry of Defence are preparing a space defence strategy that will be submitted to President Emmanuel Macron for his approval by the end of 2018.

As part of significant defence reforms being proposed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia is considering the creation of a Cyber Security and Space Force, that if implemented, will operate under the command of the Ethiopian military.

China and Russia have signed a cooperative agreement on 7 November 2018 covering their respective global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), BeiDou and GLONASS.

Ethiopian scientists and engineers are building a small Earth observation satellite in cooperation with and with funding from China, which will be launched from China in 2019, according to a report in The East African newspaper. This announcement is the culmination of much effort to bring Ethiopian space ambitions to reality.

Member States of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have re-elected Houlin Zhao of China as ITU Secretary-General during the Union's 20th Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-18) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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 Australian Space Agency (ASA) released its institutional charter on 29 October 2018 that will guide the agency in its efforts to develop Australian civil space capabilities and competencies, as well as establish a thriving space and satellite industrial base.

Nigeria is lobbying the African Union (AU) to host its African Space Centre, according to a report published in the Nigerian newspaper Independent on 29 October 2018.