WATCH CHINA LAUNCH MORE CLASSIFIED YAOGAN SPY SATELLITES - China added a trio of new satellites to its clusters of Yaogan orbital reconnaissance spacecraft last week. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 8:24 p.m. EDT on Oct. 4 (or 1224 GMT; 8:24 a.m. Beijing Time on Oct. 5). The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed launch success within an hour of liftoff.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 11)

RUSSIAN MODULE ON INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SUFFERS COOLANT LEAK - Russia's space agency said on Monday that its multipurpose Nauka module attached to the International Space Station suffered a leak of a backup cooling system used to regulate onboard temperatures for astronauts. The crew and the station "are not in danger" as astronauts assess the leak, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said in a statement posted on Telegram.   More
(Source: Reuters - Oct 10)

STRONG WINDS STYMIE BACK-TO-BACK SPACEX LAUNCH PLANS; VANDENBERG LAUNCH SUCCESSFUL - A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 12:43 a.m. PDT (0743 UTC). Its first stage booster, making its 14th flight, landed successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. Upper level winds forced SpaceX to scrub the Starlink 6-22 mission from Cape Canaveral. SpaceX was hoping to kick off the second week of October with a pair of back-to-back Falcon 9 launches, lifting off from both of its Space Force-based launch pads.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 9)

ARIANESPACE'S VEGA ROCKET LAUNCHES 12 SATELLITES TO ORBIT - A European Vega rocket launched 12 satellites toward orbit tonight (Oct. 8) on its first mission of the year. The Vega, which is operated by France-based company Arianespace, lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana tonight at 9:36 p.m. EDT (0136 GMT on Oct. 8). The 12 satellites will all be deployed into low Earth orbit (LEO) by about one hour and 45 minutes after launch, if all goes according to plan.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 9)

SPACEX TO LAUNCH 22 STARLINK SATELLITES ON OCT. 9 - SpaceX is set to launch 22 more of its Starlink internet satellites from Florida on Monday night (Oct. 9). The Starlink spacecraft are scheduled to lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Monday at 8:42 p.m. EDT (0042 GMT on Oct. 10). Four backup opportunities are available as well, from 9:32 p.m. EDT until 12:10 a.m. EDT (0132 to 0410 GMT on Oct. 10).   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 9)

CHINA TO DOUBLE SIZE OF SPACE STATION, TOUTS ALTERNATIVE TO NASA-LED ISS - China plans to expand its space station to six modules from three in coming years, offering astronauts from other nations an alternative platform for near-Earth missions as the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its lifespan. The operational lifetime of the Chinese space station will be more than 15 years, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a unit of China's main space contractor, said at the 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Wednesday.   More
(Source: Reuters - Oct 8)

STARSHIP SATELLITE LAUNCHES A YEAR AWAY - SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says it will be about a year before the company’s new Starship vehicle will be ready to start launching satellites. Musk, speaking virtually at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 5, said he felt that the vehicle would be able to start launching SpaceX’s advanced Starlink satellites even before the company had demonstrated the ability to safely recover both stages of the vehicle.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Oct 8)

ATLAS 5 LAUNCHES AMAZON KUIPER SATELLITES FOR TESTS OF SPACE-BASED INTERNET SERVICE - A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off Friday and boosted a pair of prototype internet satellites into orbit for Amazon’s Kuiper program, the latest entry in the increasingly competitive space-based broadband market currently dominated by SpaceX. “We’ve done extensive testing here in our lab and have a high degree of confidence in our satellite design, but there’s no substitute for on-orbit testing,” Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology, said in a statement. “This is Amazon’s first time putting satellites into space, and we’re going to learn an incredible amount.”   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 8)

ORBITAL 'PARKING SPOTS' COULD HELP PREVENT SATELLITE TRAFFIC JAMS - Space vehicles may soon be assigned parking spots to prevent traffic pileups in Earth's orbit. Roughly 10 times the number of satellites currently in space are expected to launch by 2030 — And this rapid expansion of Earth-observation and communications satellites is bound to create some congestion in space and therefore risk in-orbit collisions.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 6)

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