A seven-country consortium led by Leonardo will spend the coming months mapping how national, institutional and commercial satellite assets could be federated into a single European system. LEONARDO SELECTED TO HELP SHAPE EUROPE’S FUTURE SOVEREIGN EARTH OBSERVATION CAPABILITY   The European Space Agency has awarded Leonardo a fully funded contract to define the architecture of

LEONARDO TO HELP DEFINE ARCHITECTURE FOR EUROPE’S FUTURE SOVEREIGN EARTH OBSERVATION SERVICERead More »

Two new remote sensing satellite groups reached orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, a spaceport that has anchored China’s space programme since 1958 and marked its own launch on a Long March rocket family now flying roughly one mission a week. CHINA LAUNCHES YAOGAN-53 AND YAOGAN-56 GROUPS ON LONG MARCH’S 666TH FLIGHT   China

CHINA LAUNCHES YAOGAN-53 AND YAOGAN-56 SATELLITE GROUPS ON THE LONG MARCH FLEET’S 666TH MISSIONRead More »

France has awarded the CASSIOPÉE contract to Airbus Defence and Space and co-contractor Unseenlabs, renewing the country’s space-based signal intelligence capability ahead of the CERES constellation’s retirement by 2032. AIRBUS AND UNSEENLABS TO RENEW FRANCE’S SPACE-BASED SIGINT CAPABILITY   On the sidelines of the International Space Summit in Paris, Catherine Vautrin, France’s Minister for the

AIRBUS AND UNSEENLABS TO BUILD FRANCE’S NEXT MILITARY SIGNAL INTELLIGENCE SATELLITESRead More »

Boeing has delivered the final three satellites, F11, F12 and F13, in SES’s 13-strong O3b mPOWER constellation, completing a medium-Earth-orbit network designed to deliver low-latency broadband to airlines, governments and remote communities. FINAL THREE SATELLITES COMPLETE THE CONSTELLATION   Boeing has delivered the last three satellites in the O3b mPOWER programme, designated F11, F12 and

BOEING COMPLETES 13-SATELLITE O3B MPOWER CONSTELLATION FOR SESRead More »

An attitude control problem aboard Katalyst Space’s LINK spacecraft means it will not capture and boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbit as planned. LINK will still attempt rendezvous and proximity operations to demonstrate satellite servicing capabilities, with Swift now expected to re-enter the atmosphere later this year. THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS

NASA ABANDONS THE SWIFT ORBIT BOOST AFTER ATTITUDE CONTROL FAILURE, BUT WILL STILL ATTEMPT THE RENDEZVOUSRead More »

Firefly Aerospace has been awarded a NASA Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract, allowing it to bid for task orders providing payload processing facilities and services for NASA missions launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The facility in question is the one Firefly built to support responsive launch,  and it sits half a mile from its pad.

FIREFLY CLEARED TO SELL NASA THE BUILDING THAT MADE A 24-HOUR LAUNCH POSSIBLERead More »

Eight 500-kilogram satellite platforms built by Rocket Lab for MDA Space have launched successfully from Cape Canaveral and are performing nominally on orbit. They are the first batch of 17 built under a $143 million contract supporting the replenishment of Globalstar’s direct-to-device constellation. CONTACT ESTABLISHED WITH ALL EIGHT   Rocket Lab Corporation has announced the

ROCKET LAB’S FIRST EIGHT SATELLITE PLATFORMS FOR MDA SPACE REACH ORBIT, BEGINNING A 17-SPACECRAFT GLOBALSTAR REPLENISHMENTRead More »

Hisdesat has appointed Airbus Defence and Space prime contractor for SpainSat NG-III, a secure communications satellite carrying active X-band antennas that provide the capability of 16 conventional antennas and can reconfigure their coverage up to 1,000 times per second while detecting and mitigating electronic interference. THIRD SATELLITE IN EUROPE’S MOST ADVANCED SECURE COMMUNICATIONS CONSTELLATION  

AIRBUS AWARDED SPAINSAT NG-III CONTRACT FOR SATELLITE WITH ANTENNAS ABLE TO RECONFIGURE COVERAGE 1,000 TIMES A SECONDRead More »

NASA and Blue Origin have signed an annex to an existing Space Act Agreement to conduct second stage hot fire testing of the New Glenn rocket on the historic B-2 test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, supporting Artemis programme milestones and the broader goal of establishing a sustained lunar presence. B-2 STAND

NASA AND BLUE ORIGIN AGREE ON NEW GLENN SECOND STAGE TESTING AT STENNIS SPACE CENTRE, ADVANCING ARTEMIS MOON RETURNRead More »