SPACEX LAUNCHES AIRBUS-BUILT TV BROADCASTING SPACECRAFT FOR EUTELSAT - SpaceX launched the second in a series of three Falcon 9 rocket missions early Thursday for the European satellite operator Eutelsat, delivering to orbit a television broadcasting craft that also hosts an EU-funded payload to provide precise navigation data to airplanes. After a two-hour delay, the Falcon 9 rocket ignited its nine Merlin main engines and climbed away from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:22 a.m. EDT (0522 GMT) Thursday to begin a 36-minute mission to deploy Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13G communications satellite into an elongated transfer orbit stretching as far as 35,700 miles (57,500 kilometers) from Earth.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 4)

RUSSIA LAUNCHES TUNDRA MISSILE WARNING SATELLITE FROM PLESETSK - At 06:48 UTC on Nov. 2, Russia’s Soyuz-2.1b launched from Site 43/4 at Plesetsk Cosmodrome, carrying the sixth satellite of Russia’s next-generation early warning system. Upon reaching orbit, the spacecraft was designated as Kosmos-2563. The Tundra series of satellites, also known as Kupol or Edinaya Kosmicheskaya Sistema (EKS) satellites, is the next generation of Russian early warning satellites, designed to replace the US-K and US-KMO early warning satellites of the Oko-1 system.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Nov 3)

SPIRE SELECTED TO DESIGN SATELLITE FOR DARPA EXPERIMENT IN VERY LOW ORBIT - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency selected Spire Global to design a small satellite for an experiment to study high-frequency radio signals in the upper layers of the atmosphere, the company announced Nov. 1. The value of the contract was not disclosed. Spire will design a cubesat to carry a sensor in a very low Earth orbit experiment intended to learn how radio signals behave in the ionosphere, which spans the upper edges of the Earth’s atmosphere to the lower regions of space.    More
(Source: SpaceNews - Nov 2)

SPACE FORCE FUNDS EXPERIMENT ON USE OF AI TO PREDICT SATELLITE FAILURES - RS21, a data science startup developing artificial intelligence tools for autonomous space operations, won a U.S. Space Force contract to research the use of AI to predict satellite failures in orbit. The company, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, announced Oct. 26 it won a two-year Small Business Innovation Research Phase 3 contract worth $375,000 with options for over $1 million in additional work. The technology will be tested in an upcoming Space Test Program (STP) experiment, STPSat-7, projected to launch in 2023 to low Earth orbit.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Nov 2)

SPACEX'S FALCON HEAVY, WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL ROCKET, LAUNCHES US MILITARY SATELLITES IN 1ST FLIGHT IN 3 YEARS - The world's most powerful rocket currently in operation took flight this morning (Nov. 1) for the first time in more than three years. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, which consists of three of the company's modified Falcon 9 first-stage boosters strapped together, lifted off today from Pad 39A here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 9:41 a.m. EDT (1341 GMT) amid thick fog at the launch pad. The Heavy carried a handful of classified payloads toward geostationary orbit for the U.S. Space Force on a mission called USSF-44.   More
(Source: Space.com - Nov 2)

FINAL MODULE DOCKS AT CHINA’S TIANGONG SPACE STATION - A third module has arrived at China’s space station, completing the construction of the country’s crewed orbital outpost. A Long March 5B rocket lifted off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 3:37 a.m. Eastern Oct. 31. Launch success was announced inside 25 minutes of launch with the Mengtian module in low Earth orbit. Mengtian used its own propulsion to match orbit and rendezvous with the Tiangong space station—currently in a roughly 380 by 387-kilometer orbit—and connected with a forward port on Tiangong’s docking hub just under 13 hours after launch at 4:27 p.m. Eastern, China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSA, confirmed.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Nov 1)

CHINA LAUNCHES MENGTIAN SCIENCE MODULE TO TIANGONG SPACE STATION - China launched its second space station module of the year aboard a Chang Zheng 5B rocket Monday. The Mengtian module lifted off at 07:37 UTC, and once docked will complete the initial phase of the construction for China’s Tiangong space station. The launch of the Mengtian Laboratory Cabin Module, meaning “Dreaming of the Heavens,” follows the successful addition of the Wentian module to China’s Tiangong station on July 24. Like Wentian and the Tianhe core module that was launched in April 2021, Mengtian will ride into orbit aboard China’s Chang Zheng 5B (CZ-5B) rocket, also known in English as the Long March 5B.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Nov 1)

FINAL ATLAS 5 LAUNCH FROM CALIFORNIA DELAYED FOR BATTERY REPLACEMENT - The final flight of an Atlas 5 rocket from California has been delayed from Tuesday until no earlier than Nov. 9 to replace a battery on the launcher’s Centaur upper stage, United Launch Alliance and NASA officials said. The Atlas 5 rocket’s Centaur upper stage will place the JPSS 2 weather satellite into polar orbit for NOAA and NASA, then the rocket stage will perform a deorbit burn and deploy a joint ULA-NASA re-entry technology experiment named LOFTID, or the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 1)

FIRST NORTHSTAR SSA SATELLITES TO LAUNCH IN 2023 BY VIRGIN ORBIT - NorthStar Earth and Space, a company planning a constellation of satellites to collect space situational awareness data, will launch its first satellites in mid-2023 with Virgin Orbit. NorthStar announced Oct. 27 that its first three satellites, 12-unit cubesats built by Spire, will be launched by Virgin Orbit in mid-2023. The companies did not disclose terms of the launch deal or where the launch, using Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch system, will take place.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Oct 31)

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