LOCKHEED MARTIN DECLARES SUCCESS DEMONSTRATING TECH FOR IN-ORBIT SATELLITE SERVICING - A pair of Lockheed Martin cubesats that flew to geostationary Earth orbit in November performed maneuvers in close proximity and demonstrated other technologies for in-orbit servicing operations, company officials said April 17. The Linuss experiment — short for Lockheed Martin’s In-space Upgrade Satellite System — went to orbit on the USSF-44 national security mission launched by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. More (Source: SpaceNews - Apr 19)
NORTH KOREA CLAIMS IT’S READY TO LAUNCH FIRST SPY SATELLITE: STATE MEDIA - North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has ordered officials to prepare to launch the country’s first military reconnaissance satellite, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Wednesday. During his visit to the National Aerospace Development Administration on Tuesday, Kim Jong Un said the country’s military reconnaissance satellite production has been completed and ordered the dispatching of “several reconnaissance satellites,” KCNA reported. More (Source: CNN - Apr 19)
CHINA'S NEW SPACE STATION, TIANGONG, WILL RUN HIGH-ENERGY BEAM EXPERIMENTS - China has completed the remarkable feat of building and deploying its third space station, Tiangong, in a mere two years. Translated, Tiangong means "Palace in the Sky," and this new space station aims to test various technologies that could eventually be used on a larger scale, with both civilian and military applications. In addition to its scientific applications, Tiangong will be used as a testbed for China's future manned spaceflight program. More (Source: Forbes - Apr 19)
HOW TO RAPIDLY PRODUCE HIGH-VOLUME SATELLITE STRUCTURES - Thanks to industrial processes, Beyond Gravity (formerly RUAG Space) has proven that it is capable of producing satellite structures in very large quantities. The international space supplier has a strong presence in the USA. With more than 600 satellites in orbit the OneWeb constellation is set to provide global broadband coverage by year-end. More (Source: SpaceNews - Apr 18)
DEAD NASA SATELLITE WILL CRASH TO EARTH THIS WEEK - A dead NASA spacecraft will come crashing back to Earth in the next few days, experts say. NASA's RHESSI satellite, which studied the sun from 2002 until its decommissioning in 2018, is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere around 9:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday (April 19; 0130 GMT on April 20), plus or minus 16 hours, according to the latest estimates by the U.S. military. RHESSI (short for "Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager") isn't a huge satellite. It weighs just 600 pounds (270 kilograms), and the majority of that mass will be converted to ash and vapor during RHESSI's death dive, NASA officials said. More (Source: Space.com - Apr 18)
NEXT-GENERATION SATELLITE NETWORK COULD CONNECT EARTH WITH BASES ON MOON'S FAR SIDE - As NASA's cargo and crew programs for the International Space Station increasingly look to commercial providers for launch services, other sectors of the space agency are increasingly looking to private companies to add critical infrastructure to support NASA missions. To that end, Lockheed Martin has created Crescent Space Services LLC, a subsidiary aimed at operating a service-based network of communication and navigation satellites to support future missions to the moon, the company announced. More (Source: Space.com - Apr 18)
SPACEX DRAGON CAPSULE SPLASHES DOWN AFTER RESUPPLY MISSION TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - A SpaceX cargo craft successfully splashed down after a resupply mission to the International Space Station on Saturday. CRS-27, SpaceX’s 27th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, launched from Kennedy Space Center in March as a ferry for 6,300 pounds of supplies that included scientific payloads, student-manufactured hardware and fresh foods such as cheeses and cherry tomatoes. More (Source: Click Orlando - Apr 17)
SPACEX CARGO DRAGON DEPARTS THE SPACE STATION - Following commands from ground controllers at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, Dragon undocked at 11:05 a.m. from the forward port of the station’s Harmony module. At the time of undocking the station was flying over the Indian Ocean. After re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will make a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida on Saturday, April 15. NASA will not broadcast the splashdown, but updates will be posted on the agency’s space station blog. More (Source: NASA - Apr 17)
CHINA LAUNCHES NEW METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE - China on Sunday morning launched a Long March-4B rocket to place a new meteorological satellite in space. The rocket blasted off at 9:36 a.m. (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China and soon sent the Fengyun-3 07 satellite into its preset orbit. The satellite will provide services for weather forecasting, disaster prevention and mitigation, climate change response and ecological conservation. More (Source: Xinhua - Apr 17)
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