SPACEX SENDS 28 STARLINK SATELLITES TO LOW EARTH ORBIT IN PREDAWN LAUNCH - An overnight launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station allowed SpaceX to continue bolstering its Starlink satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. The Thursday morning flight added another 28 V2 Mini satellites to the network of 8,600 currently on orbit, according to astronomer and expert orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell. Of the more than 125 Falcon 9 launches in 2025, 91 have flown in support of SpaceX’s constellation prior to Thursday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 17)

NEW SPACE DEBRIS SHIELD? SATELLITES AND ASTRONAUTS COULD SUIT UP IN NOVEL 'SPACE ARMOR' - Humanity has a new tool in the fight against space junk — "Space Armor™," a multi-functional composite that could protect both spacecraft and astronauts. Space Armor is made via a proprietary fiber-to-resin manufacturing method courtesy of the company Atomic-6, which is based in Marietta, Georgia.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 17)

A GIANT WEAK SPOT IN EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD IS GETTING BIGGER — AND IT COULD BE BAD NEWS FOR SATELLITES - A weak region in Earth's magnetic field has grown by an area roughly half the size of continental Europe in the last 10 years. That's according to data collected by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm satellite constellation over the last 11 years. Swarm has been monitoring a region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly since 2014, and scientists have just published a new study of the area that reveals that, not only has the anomaly expanded eastward, it has actually been weakening more quickly since 2020.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 16)

SPACEX LAUNCHES 2ND BATCH OF SATELLITES FOR SPACE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY FOLLOWING WEATHER SCRUB - The Space Development Agency added another 21 satellites to its burgeoning low Earth orbit constellation thanks to a launch onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It is the second of ten launches that the SDA booked onboard Falcon 9 so far. The T1TL-C mission was the second flight supporting what the SDA calls its Tranche 1 Transport Layer. It’s the latest piece of a satellite constellation dubbed the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 16)

ROCKET LAB LAUNCHES 7TH STRIX EARTH OBSERVATION SATELLITES FOR JAPAN-BASED SYNSPECTIVE - Japan-based Earth observation company, Synspective, launched its seventh StriX satellite into low Earth orbit, part of a multi-launch deal with Rocket Lab. On Wednesday morning in Mahia, New Zealand (Tuesday afternoon on the East Coast of the U.S.), a Rocket Lab Electron rocket took flight from Pad A at Launch Complex 1 to begin a roughly 50-minute-long mission. Launch teams confirmed a nominal deployment of the satellite into a 583 km circular orbit.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 15)

SPACEX LAUNCHES FINAL VERSION 2 STARSHIP-SUPER HEAVY ROCKET - SpaceX closed a chapter in its Starship saga on Monday. It launched what appeared to be a nearly flawless suborbital mission with its Version 2 Starship-Super Heavy rocket, the final flight for this iteration of the launch vehicle. The more than 400-foot-tall rocket thundered away from Pad A at Starbase at 6:23 p.m. CDT (7:23 p.m. EDT / 2323 UTC) to begin the roughly one-hour-long flight. The only notable hiccup during ascent was that one of the planned 13 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster, tail number B15, didn’t reignite during the boostback burn.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 14)

CHINA SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NEW TEST SATELLITE - China successfully launched a new test satellite into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Monday. The Shiyan-31 test satellite was launched at 6:00 p.m. (Beijing Time) aboard a Long March-2D carrier rocket and entered the preset orbit successfully. This satellite will be mainly used to verify new optical imaging technologies.   More
(Source: Xinhua - Oct 14)

IS LOW EARTH ORBIT GETTING TOO CROWDED? NEW STUDY RINGS AN ALARM BELL - Hundreds of satellites may soon be flying in orbital regions that are already too packed to allow safe and long-term operations, a new study suggests. The study found that, while in 2019 only 0.2% of satellites in Earth orbit were forced to perform more than 10 collision-avoidance maneuvers per month, that percentage had risen sevenfold by early 2025, to 1.4%. That number might still seem low, but it means that some 340 satellites spend a lot of time dodging debris and other spacecraft.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 14)

SPACEX LAUNCHES 24 AMAZON KUIPER SATELLITES FOLLOWING DAYS OF WEATHER DELAYS - After more than a week of launch delays, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with two dozen of Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet satellites onboard Monday night. The mission came about an hour and a half following the splashdown of SpaceX’s Starship rocket at the conclusion of Starship Flight 11.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 14)

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