SATELLITE BILLED AS THE ‘FUTURE GPS’ BEGINS KEY TESTS - L3Harris announced Jan. 26 it delivered the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) to the U.S. Air Force and the spacecraft is now undergoing final tests in preparation for a planned launch in late 2023. NTS-3 is an experiment funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory that will broadcast positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals from geostationary Earth orbit. The goal is to demonstrate next-generation PNT technologies for the U.S. military and provide an alternative to GPS.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Jan 28)

CHINA WANTS TO LAUNCH OVER 200 SPACECRAFT IN 2023 - China last year performed 64 orbital rocket launches and finished building its own space station, but the country is planning an even busier year for 2023. China's main space contractor and Long March rocket maker, CASC, announced (opens in new tab)on Jan. 18 that it is planning more than 60 launches this year, after carrying out 54 missions throughout 2022.    More
(Source: Space.com - Jan 28)

SPACEX LAUNCHES HEAVIEST PAYLOAD ON REUSED ROCKET'S 9TH FLIGHT - SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket lifted its heaviest payload ever into low Earth orbit on Thursday morning (Jan. 26), launching 56 new Starlink internet-beaming satellites. The Falcon 9 first-stage booster that propelled the mission during its ascent through Earth's atmosphere had been used eight times previously, including on two crewed missions to the International Space Station (Crew 3 and Crew 4, which launched in November 2021 and April 2022 respectively).   More
(Source: Space.com - Jan 27)

ASTEROID 2023 BU: SPACE ROCK PASSES CLOSER THAN SOME SATELLITES - Now it's over, we can say it: a biggish asteroid passed by Earth a short while ago. About the size of a minibus, the space rock, known as 2023 BU, whipped over the southern tip of South America just before 00:30am GMT. With a closest approach of 3,600km (2,200 miles), it counts as a close shave. And it illustrates how there are still asteroids of significant size lurking near Earth that remain to be detected.   More
(Source: BBC News - Jan 27)

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)

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