NASA TELEVISION TO AIR DEPARTURE OF NORTHROP GRUMMAN’S CYGNUS FROM SPACE STATION - Northrop Grumman’s uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to depart the International Space Station on Wednesday, Jan. 6, more than three months after delivering nearly 8,000 pounds of supplies, scientific investigations, commercial products, hardware, and other cargo to the orbiting outpost. Live coverage of the cargo spacecraft’s departure will begin at 9:45 a.m. EST on NASA Television and the agency’s website, with release of Cygnus scheduled for 10:10 a.m. More (Source: NASA - Dec 30)
ARIANESPACE, WITH RUSSIAN SOYUZ, LAUNCHES CSO-2 FRENCH MILITARY SATELLITE - The 114th and final orbital launch of 2020 saw a Soyuz ST-A rocket loft the CSO-2 Earth observation satellite for the French Ministry of Defence. Liftoff occurred at 16:42:07 UTC (11:42:07 EST) on 29 December from the ELS (Ensemble de Lancement Soyouz) launchpad at the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, an overseas department of France. More (Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Dec 29)
ISS SLOW SCAN TV EVENT 145.800 MHZ FM - An ARISS Slow Scan TV (SSTV) event is scheduled from the International Space Station (ISS) for December 24-31. This will be a special SSTV event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ARISS operations on the ISS. The event is scheduled to begin on December 24 from 16:40 GMT and continue until December 31 ending at 18:15 GMT. Dates and times subject to change due to ISS operational adjustments. More (Source: AMSAT UK - Dec 29)
CHINA LAUNCHES NEW REMOTE SENSING SATELLITE - hina sent a new remote sensing satellite into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 11.44pm Sunday (Beijing Time). The satellite, Yaogan-33, was launched aboard a Long March-4C rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully. It was the 357th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series. More (Source: The Star Online - Dec 28)
FRENCH MILITARY SPYSAT SET FOR LAUNCH MONDAY - A sharp-eyed French military surveillance spacecraft is set for launch aboard a Soyuz rocket Monday from French Guiana into a 300-mile-high orbit, where it will collect the highest-resolution imagery ever produced by a European reconnaissance satellite. A Russian Soyuz ST-A rocket rolled out to its launch pad at the Guiana Space Center in South America on Dec. 23. Since then, ground teams have hoisted the French military’s CSO 2 spy satellite — already enclosed within the Soyuz payload shroud — on top of the rocket. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 28)
ISRAELI SATELLITE STRAYS FROM PATH TO PREVENT COLLISION WITH NASA’S TERRA - Some days you open your email to find a spam message from a Nigerian prince asking for money, and there are other days when you find a message from the European Space Agency (ESA) warning that your satellite is on a collision course with another, and you better do something about it fast. That’s what happened at the beginning of December to the Israeli-French environmental research satellite Venus’ operational team. More (Source: CTech - Dec 28)
CHINA’S LONG MARCH 8 ROCKET SUCCESSFUL IN DEBUT LAUNCH - A new Chinese launch vehicle, the Long March 8, has successfully placed five payloads into orbit on its first mission, debuting an expendable booster intended to eventually be outfitted for recovery and reuse. The Long March 8 rocket took off from the Wenchang satellite launch center on Hainan Island, China’s newest spaceport, at 11:37 p.m. EST Dec. 20 (0437 GMT; 12:37 p.m. Beijing time Dec. 21), Chinese space program officials said. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 28)
THE BIGGEST EVENTS FROM 2020, BEFORE AND AFTER, AS SEEN BY SATELLITES - 2020 featured incredible upheaval around the world thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as its fill of natural and man-made disasters. Through it all, the scale of the disruption and destruction was captured from the sky by Maxar Technologies, a US space tech company that specialises in Earth observation. Here are the best before-and-after photos as seen by Maxar's satellites. More (Source: ABC News - Dec 27)
CAPELLA SPACE UNVEILS SUPER-SHARP RADAR IMAGES OF EARTH (PHOTOS) - Capella Space's first fully operational satellite has snapped some breathtaking images of Earth during its first few months in orbit. The Capella-2 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, previously known as Sequoia, launched atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster on Aug. 30. Because Capella-2 captures imagery using radio waves rather than visible light, the spacecraft can both peer through clouds and study swaths of our planet that are cloaked in darkness. More (Source: Space.com - Dec 27)
Previous Next
