RUSSIAN CARGO CRAFT NEARS STATION, U.S. SPACE FREIGHTER AT LAUNCH PAD - A Russian resupply ship is targeting the International Space Station for a cargo delivery early Thursday. While two cosmonauts get ready to support the cargo craft’s arrival, the rest of the Expedition 66 crew juggled lab maintenance, space research, and robotics training ahead of a U.S. cargo mission due to launch on Saturday. Nearly three-and-a-half tons of food, fuel, and supplies are racing toward the orbiting lab today aboard the ISS Progress 80 resupply ship from Roscosmos.   More
(Source: NASA - Feb 17)

EU STATES AGREE ON NEED TO BUILD OWN SATELLITE CONSTELLATION - European Union ministers, meeting on space policy in Toulouse, on Wednesday agreed that the bloc needed an autonomous satellite constellation infrastructure for high-speed internet access, France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said. “This is probably the most important achievement of today’s meeting,” Le Maire told a news conference after the meeting. French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke at the event, said that bundling efforts to build up a satellite constellation independently from more advanced projects like Elon Musk’s SpaceX was for Europe was a “matter of sovereignty”.   More
(Source: WTVB - Feb 17)

‘THIS IS ROCKET SCIENCE’: MICROMETEORITE COLLISION BLAMED FOR NBN SATELLITE INTERNET OUTAGE - A micrometeorite slamming into a satellite was the likely cause of a seven-hour outage for NBN Co internet users in December, a Senate hearing has been told. About 46,500 of NBN Co’s 112,000 satellite users in regional and remote parts of Australia were left without internet between 8.30pm on 21 December and 3.20am the following morning due to the incident.   More
(Source: The Guardian - Feb 17)

SEE A LARGE ROBOTIC ARM 'CRAWL' ACROSS CHINA'S SPACE STATION (VIDEO) - Footage from China's space station shows how its large robotic arm can "crawl" along the outside of the spacecraft. The new video from the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMSA) shows the space station's 33.5-foot-long (10.2 meters) robotic arm rising up from behind the Tianhe module and reaching out to find a docking port in the foreground. The footage was captured by panoramic camera D on the Tianhe core module, which launched to China's new Tiangong space station in April 2021.   More
(Source: Space.com - Feb 16)

INDIA PUTS THREE SATELLITES INTO ORBIT IN THE FIRST LAUNCH OF 2022 - India launched three satellites Feb. 14 on its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in a rideshare mission marking the nation’s first launch of the year. The PSLV-C52 rocket lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Center 6:59 p.m. EST, said India’s space agency ISRO in a statement. The launch was live-streamed on YouTube, which showed the rocket blasting off with bright flame jetting from its first-stage booster and soaring into the dark sky. The agency said the three satellites had been deployed successfully into a sun-synchronous polar orbit of 529 kilometers after a flight of about 17 minutes and 34 seconds.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Feb 15)

RUSSIAN CARGO SHIP LAUNCHES IN PURSUIT OF INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Russia’s Progress MS-19 supply ship launched from frigid Kazakhstan late Monday aboard a Soyuz rocket to begin a two-day pursuit of the International Space Station with more than 5,500 pounds of fuel, food, water, and experiments. Liftoff of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket occurred at 11:25:40 p.m. EST Monday (0425:40 GMT Tuesday) from the Site 31 launch complex at Baikonur, where it was 9:25 a.m. local time, with a temperature hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 9 degrees Celsius).   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Feb 15)

ISRO LAUNCHES EOS-04 MISSION VIA PSLV-XL - India launched the PSLV-XL rocket for the nation’s first mission of 2022. Following last August’s EOS-03 GSLV launch failure, ISRO returned to flight with the workhorse rocket. For this flight, PSLV will carry the EOS-04 radar Earth observation satellite along with two secondary payloads. The PSLV-C52 (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket embarked on ISRO’s 80th orbital launch at 00:29 UTC on Monday, February 14th (05:59 Indian Standard Time; 7:29pm EST February 13th) from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.   More
(Source: - Feb 14)

INDIA WILL LAUNCH ITS FIRST SPACE MISSION OF 2022 TONIGHT. HERE'S HOW TO WATCH LIVE. - India's first launch of 2022 will send a new Earth observation satellite to space after a sibling satellite was lost in a failed launch last year. You can watch the launch of the EOS-04 satellite live on Sunday (Feb. 13) at 7:29 p.m. EST (0029 GMT or 6:29 p.m. local time Monday, Feb. 14), assuming that the mission blasts off on time. You can watch the launch live on this page, as well as on the ISRO website and YouTube channel . The livestream generally turns on a few minutes before launch.   More
(Source: Space.com - Feb 14)

CHINA'S LAND-OBSERVING SATELLITE BEGINS ITS WORK IN ORBIT - A Chinese remote-sensing satellite has started to take pictures in its orbit, scientists in charge of the satellite said Friday. China launched a Long March-4C carrier rocket to place the L-SAR 01A satellite in space on January 26. The satellite, equipped with L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), can monitor the geological environment, landslides and earthquakes.   More
(Source: CGTN - Feb 13)

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