CHINA COMPLETES CORE OF BEIDOU GLOBAL SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEM - Two Chinese Beidou navigation satellites successfully launched Monday on top of a Long March 3B rocket, completing the core of China’s independent positioning and timing network ahead of the start of global service next year. The 184-foot-tall (56-meter) Long March 3B rocket lifted off from the Xichang space base in southwestern China’s Sichuan province at 0722 GMT (2:22 a.m. EST; 3:22 p.m. Beijing time) Monday, according to statements issued by the country’s top state-owned aerospace contractor.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 17)

SPACEX FALCON 9 LAUNCHES HEAVYWEIGHT SATELLITE INTO ORBIT, NAILS ROCKET LANDING - SpaceX launched its 13th mission of the year Monday (Dec. 16) as a twice-flown Falcon 9 booster took to the skies for the third time carrying a satellite for a Singapore-based startup and Japanese broadband provider. The Falcon 9 rocket lit up the skies over Florida's Space Coast as it carried its payload, a heavyweight communications satellite, into space from Space Launch Complex 40 here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Liftoff occurred at 7:10 p.m. EST (0010 GMT)   More
(Source: Space.com - Dec 17)

GAOFEN SATELLITES UPGRADE CHINA'S CIVILIAN MAPPING PRACTICE - On December 10, China unveiled the first batch of high-resolution, three-dimensional images of Earth from its latest mapping satellite, Gaofen-7, marking the country's effort to ramp up its technical capacity for observing the planet. The satellite, launched on November 3, is China's first civil-use, optical transmission, three-dimensional surveying and mapping satellite that reaches sub-meter definition.   More
(Source: CGTN - Dec 16)

WHY IN THE NEXT DECADE COMPANIES WILL LAUNCH THOUSANDS MORE SATELLITES THAN IN ALL OF HISTORY - If a handful of space companies succeed, the next decade will see more satellites put into orbit around the Earth than all the satellites launched since Sputnik 1 in 1957. While SpaceX makes up the lion’s share of these plans, together with OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, the four companies have announced the intention to launch as many as 46,100 satellites in the next few years. That’s more than five times the amount of objects sent to space in the past 60 years, which numbers just shy of 9,000 according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.   More
(Source: CNBC - Dec 16)

KEPLER TO LAUNCH TWO BATCHES OF NANOSATELLITES ABOARD SPACEX’S FALCON 9 - Small-satellite startup Kepler Communications is teaming up with SpaceX to make good on its deployment goals for its first nanosatellite constellation. SpaceX will carry two separate batches of nanosatellites from Kepler aboard its Falcon 9 launch vehicles. Kepler Communications, a Toronto-based space startup, will be building out a low-power, direct IoT connectivity satellite-based network, as well as a more high-capacity network powered with the same satellites to provide high-speed data transfer capabilities.   More
(Source: TechCrunch - Dec 14)

NASA GIVES GO-AHEAD FOR STARLINER TEST FLIGHT TO SPACE STATION - NASA officials cleared Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft for flight Thursday after a “thorough and comprehensive” review of the crew capsule’s readiness, setting the stage for final pre-launch preparations at Cape Canaveral ahead of liftoff Dec. 20 on an unpiloted demonstration mission to the International Space Station.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 14)

CHINA JOINS SATELLITE SPACE RACE: CHINESE COMPANY TO LAUNCH 5G COMMS SATELLITE - The first low-Earth broadband satellite in the part of the spectrum that will be the next frontier of satellite communications, the high-frequency Q/V band, is set for launch by a Chinese company. The Global Times reported Thursday that Chinese commercial aerospace company Galaxy Space plans to launch the low-Earth broadband 5G satellite at the end of the month. Beijing Daily reported that the company announced at a global 5G conference in China that the 10Gbps satellite will be launched from a site in Jiuquan, China.    More
(Source: Benzinga - Dec 13)

PHOTO OF THE DAY: BRIGHTLY-LIT BUCHAREST PHOTOGRAPHED AT NIGHT FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - The US space agency NASA has published a photo of Romania's capital Bucharest taken at night from the International Space Station. The photo shows the brightly-lit city with its boulevards and surroundings.   More
(Source: Romania-Insider.com - Dec 13)

RUSSIAN LAUNCHES SATELLITE TO REPLENISH ITS GLONASS NAVIGATION SYSTEM - Russia launched a new satellite to replenish its GLONASS navigation system, placed in orbit this Wednesday via a Soyuz-2-1b rocket with a Fregat-M upper stage, from Russian Plitsesk Cosmodrome, the Defense Ministry reoorted.    More
(Source: Prensa Latina - Dec 12)

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