UNITED STATES AND INDIA EXPAND CIVIL SPACE COOPERATION - U.S. and Indian officials agreed this week to expand civil space cooperation, including training Indian astronauts and flying payloads on commercial lunar landers. In meetings this week in Washington, held with little public fanfare, the United States and India agreed to expanded cooperation in civil space and laid the groundwork for potential new efforts. More (Source: SpaceNews - Feb 5)
KAPOW! INFLATABLE SPACE STATION MODULE BLOWS TO PIECES IN VIDEO EXPLOSION - Sierra Space aimed to blow a space module apart on video, and delivered on that promise in spades. The company completed its third module test on the journey to certify its module design for eventual spaceflight and to help develop a private space complex to replace the International Space Station (ISS). The accelerated systematic creep test, as the company termed the December trial, exceeded NASA's certification requirements. More (Source: Space.com - Feb 4)
SPACEX LAUNCHES 53 MORE STARLINK INTERNET SATELLITES - A Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Thursday with 53 more Starlink satellites for SpaceX’s global internet network. The 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket fired off pad 39A at Kennedy at 2:58:20 a.m. EST (0758:20 GMT) Thursday, and shot into an orbit more than 200 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth after flying southeast from Florida’s Space Coast. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Feb 3)
SECOND FLIGHT OF CROSS-COUNTRY STARLINK DOUBLEHEADER TARGETING THURSDAY - SpaceX ended January with and will begin February with two Starlink missions. These launches will occur two days apart from separate launch sites. The first such mission — Starlink Group 2-6 — lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 8:15 AM PST (16:15 UTC) after a delay from Monday “to allow additional time for pre-launch checkouts.” This will be followed by the Starlink Group 5-3 mission, which will launch from the historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is currently scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 2 at 2:43 AM EST (07:43 UTC). More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Feb 2)
SOUTH KOREA PICKS VEGA C TO LAUNCH SATELLITE GROUNDED BY RUSSIAN SANCTIONS - South Korea has selected Arianespace’s Vega C rocket to launch a multipurpose imaging satellite, KOMPSAT-6, that has remained grounded due to sanctions imposed on Russia for invading Ukraine. South Korea’s vice minister for science, Oh Tae-seog, announced Feb. 1 that Vega-C was selected for the launch following international bidding. More (Source: SpaceNews - Feb 2)
GHGSAT: COMMERCIAL SATELLITE WILL SEE CO2 SUPER-EMITTERS - The world's first commercial satellite dedicated to monitoring carbon dioxide from orbit will launch later this year. It will be put up by the Canadian company GHGSat, which already flies six spacecraft tracking methane emissions. The new platform will use the same shortwave infrared sensor but be tuned to CO2's specific light signature in the atmosphere. The satellite will have a resolution at ground level of 25m, meaning it will be able see major individual sources. More (Source: BBC News - Feb 1)
NASA HITS LIMITS OF SPACE STATION UTILIZATION - NASA has effectively reached full utilization of the International Space Station given limitations on crew time and the ability to get cargo to and from the station, an agency official said Jan. 30. Speaking at a meeting of a National Academies committee working on the decadal survey for biological and physical sciences in space, Kirt Costello, NASA ISS chief scientist, said that the agency had reached the limits of its share of station resources to do research. “As we get into this discussion of what is full utilization, I will tell you that I believe that we are already there,” he said. “We have maximized the capabilities of station not only to do research but to sustain the utilization resources we have.” More (Source: SpaceNews - Feb 1)
DEFUNCT SATELLITE AND ROCKET STAGE NEARLY COLLIDE IN POTENTIAL ‘WORST-CASE SCENARIO’ - An old rocket body and military satellite—large pieces of space junk dating back to the Soviet Union—nearly smashed into each other on Friday morning, in an uncomfortable near-miss that would’ve resulted in thousands of pieces of debris had they collided. LeoLabs, a private company that tracks satellites and derelict objects in low Earth orbit, spotted the near-collision in radar data. The company, which can track objects as tiny as 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter, operates three radar stations, two in the U.S. and one in New Zealand. More (Source: Gizmodo - Jan 31)
INMARSAT-6 F2 SATELLITE COMPLETES THREE-DAY TRIP TO SPACEX LAUNCH SITE - Inmarsat’s latest geostationary telecoms satellite has arrived at its Florida launch site after a three-day journey from Airbus’ testing facilities in France. An Airbus Beluga plane carrying the 5,500-kilogram Inmarsat-6 F2 (I-6 F2) satellite landed at the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 27, Airbus Space Systems spokesperson Jeremy Close said, following refueling stops in Canada and Virginia. It is the second time a Beluga has flown a large satellite across the Atlantic to Florida since Airbus announced its outsized freight transportation service early last year. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jan 31)
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