CHINA’S FIRST STACKABLE SATELLITE REACHES ORBIT ON SOLID ROCKET LAUNCH - A light-lift solid rocket sent an experimental “plate-like” stackable satellite into orbit late Thursday as the country looks to build its answer to Starlink. A Kuaizhou-1A solid rocket lifted off from a TEL into blue skies above the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 10:35 p.m. June 8. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) confirmed launch success a short time later.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Jun 10)

ASTRONAUTS MAKE FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR FRIDAY’S SPACEWALK - Four Expedition 69 astronauts are making final preparations ahead of Friday’s spacewalk to continue upgrading the International Space Station’s power generation system. Meanwhile, the orbital outpost’s three cosmonauts focused on heart research and plasma physics while ensuring station systems remain in tip-top shape. NASA Flight Engineers Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg are scheduled to set their Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs), or spacesuits, to battery power at 9:15 a.m. EDT on Friday officially beginning a spacewalk to install a roll-out solar array on the station’s starboard truss structure.   More
(Source: NASA - Jun 9)

THIS NEW TOOL 'CLEANS' ANNOYING SATELLITE TRAILS FROM HUBBLE TELESCOPE PHOTOS - Despite the alarming regularity with which artificial satellites intrude on photos snapped by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the science done with data from the telescope has not suffered, a new study reports. "To date, not one Hubble science program has been affected by satellite trails," representatives of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Maryland, which carries out science operations for Hubble and conducted the latest study, wrote in a statement published Monday (June 5).   More
(Source: Space.com - Jun 9)

SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW US EAST COAST ENGULFED BY SMOKE FROM CANADIAN WILDFIRES - The U.S. Northeast woke up to a "horribly smoky day" on Wednesday (June 7), as a low-pressure system funnels toxic smoke from wildfires in Canada across the Atlantic Coast. The beige-tinged haze can be seen in imagery captured by the weather forecasting satellite GOES East, but plentiful eyewitness reports of the smoke have also cropped up on social media since Tuesday afternoon (June 6).    More
(Source: Space.com - Jun 8)

SATELLITE BEAMS SOLAR POWER DOWN TO EARTH, IN FIRST-OF-A-KIND DEMONSTRATION - Researchers have taken a small but necessary step toward realizing a long-standing dream: harvesting solar energy in space and beaming it down to Earth. A satellite launched in January has steered power in a microwave beam onto targets in space, and even sent some of that power to a detector on Earth, the experiment’s builder, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), announced on 1 June. “No one has done this before,” says space scientist Sanjay Vijendran at the European Space Agency (ESA). “They’re bringing credibility to the topic by demonstrating this capability.”   More
(Source: Science - Jun 7)

CARGO DRAGON DOCKS AT SPACE STATION - Closing out an automated 18-hour rendezvous, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with 7,000 pounds of supplies and equipment, including two add-on roll-out solar blankets, caught up with the International Space Station early Tuesday and moved in for a problem-free docking. Flying through orbital darkness 270 miles above the southern tip of South America, the unpiloted Dragon, launched Monday from the Kennedy Space Center, approached the lab from behind and below, looping up in front of the station and then on to a point about 600 feet directly above the forward Harmony module’s space-facing port.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 7)

GALILEO SECOND GENERATION ENTERS FULL DEVELOPMENT PHASE - Galileo Second Generation will be made up of two independent families of satellites meeting the same performance requirements, produced by Thales Alenia Space in Italy and Airbus Defence and Space in Germany. ESA Director of Navigation, Javier Benedicto, invited Thales Alenia Space (Italy), Airbus Defence and Space (Germany) and Thales Six GTS (France) to sign respective contracts to initiate System Engineering Support for the next generation of Europe’s navigation satellite system.   More
(Source: SatNews - Jun 6)

MOMENTUS SECURES SECOND PICOSATELLITE TRANSPORTATION DEAL WITH APOGEO SPACE - Space infrastructure services company Momentus secured a contract with Italy’s Apogeo Space to provide orbital transportation services for nine of Apogeo’s IoT constellation picosatellites. The deal, announced Monday, represents the second nine-satellite batch Momentus that will deliver for Apogeo’s planned 100-satellite constellation, which is schedule to enter service by the second half of 2023.   More
(Source: Via Satellite - Jun 6)

WATCH SPACEX DRAGON CARGO CAPSULE DOCK WITH SPACE STATION EARLY TUESDAY - A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule will arrive at the International Space Station early Tuesday morning (June 6), and you can watch the action live. The robotic Dragon launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Monday (June 5) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's schedule to dock at the space-facing port of the orbiting lab's Harmony module on Tuesday at 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 GMT), ending an 18-hour orbital chase.   More
(Source: Space.com - Jun 6)

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