JAPAN LAUNCHES INTELLIGENCE SATELLITE TO MONITOR WEATHER, NORTH KOREA - Japan successfully launched Thursday a rocket carrying a government intelligence-gathering radar satellite to improve disaster response and monitor developments at North Korean military sites. The No. 46 H2A rocket, operated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center in the southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima following a one-day delay due to poor weather. The satellite entered its planned orbit, Mitsubishi Heavy said. More (Source: Kyodo News - Jan 26)
ROCKET LAB SATELLITE MISSION BLASTS OFF SUCCESSFULLY IN FIRST LAUNCH FROM U.S. SOIL - Rocket Lab's launch vehicle successfully delivered three commercial radio satellites into orbit around the Earth, 24 hours after its original scheduled launch was aborted due to bad weather. The company's Electron booster blasted off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 6 p.m. EST Tuesday, the California-based company's maiden launch from American soil. More (Source: UPI - Jan 26)
ESA IS NO LONGER PLANNING TO SEND ASTRONAUTS TO CHINA’S TIANGONG SPACE STATION - ESA’s director general says the agency does not have the budgetary capacity nor the political intention to send its astronauts to China’s space station. “We are very busy supporting and ensuring our commitments and activities on the International Space Station where we have a number of international partners working together,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in response to a question from SpaceNews during an annual press briefing in Paris on Monday. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jan 26)
U.S. TO TEST NUCLEAR-POWERED SPACECRAFT BY 2027 - The United States plans to test a spacecraft engine powered by nuclear fission by 2027 as part of a long-term NASA effort to demonstrate more efficient methods of propelling astronauts to Mars in the future, the space agency’s chief said on Tuesday. NASA will partner with the U.S. military's research and development agency, DARPA, to develop a nuclear thermal propulsion engine and launch it to space "as soon as 2027," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a conference in National Harbor, Maryland. More (Source: Reuters - Jan 25)
PERSISTENT COOPERATION ON THE SPACE STATION - Ever since Russia started an all-out invasion of Ukraine last February, the space community has wondered what it would mean for the future of the International Space Station. Russia is an essential partner on the station, but at the same time Russia and the West were rapidly unwinding cooperation elsewhere, from commercial launch to the Russian-European ExoMars mission. More (Source: The Space Review - Jan 25)
CLASSIFIED CHINESE SATELLITE RELEASES SMALL OBJECT IN ORBIT - A classified Chinese technology verification satellite that launched earlier this month has apparently released an object into orbit alongside it. China launched (opens in new tab) Shijian 23 on a Long March 7A rocket on Jan. 8, sending the satellite into an initial transfer orbit to reach its intended geostationary orbit (GEO), around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth. More (Source: Space.com - Jan 25)
SATELLITE CONSTELLATIONS COULD INTERFERE WITH METEOROLOGICAL SPECTRUM - Satellite megaconstellations could pose a threat to the spectrum that meteorologists are eager to protect from radio frequency interference. At the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in Denver, meteorologists and spectrum experts expressed concern about proposals for SpaceX’s second-generation Starlink broadband constellations and acknowledged that other proposed megaconstellations could create interference as well. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jan 24)
ASTRONAUTS RING IN CHINESE NEW YEAR ON TIANGONG SPACE STATION - A Chinese astronaut crew decked their space station in red to celebrate the new year. The Shenzhou 15 crew carried lucky red signs and strung red banners around the Tiangong space station to welcome the Chinese New Year on Sunday (Jan. 22), which will be the Year of the Rabbit. "As we welcome the upcoming spring festival in China's space station, we wish you all peace and joy [and] getting what you wish for," commander Fei Junlong said in the video released by the China National Space Administration. More (Source: Space.com - Jan 24)
ASTRONAUTS COMPLETE SPACEWALK TO PREP FOR NEW ISS SOLAR ARRAYS - Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and NASA astronaut Nicole Mann suited up and floated outside the International Space Station Friday for a spacewalk to prepare the lab for arrival of another pair of new solar arrays later this year. The astronauts switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 8:14 a.m. EST (1314 GMT) Friday to mark the official start of the spacewalk, the first of the year at the space station. They floated out of the Quest airlock to begin gathering tools and headed to the starboard, or right, side of the station’s power truss. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jan 23)
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