SOYUZ CREW DOCKS WITH SPACE STATION; PENCE REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT TO MOON MISSIONS - Fifty years to the day after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, a NASA astronaut, an Italian flight engineer and a Russian commander blasted off from Kazakhstan Saturday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, chased down the International Space Station and glided in for a picture-perfect docking. A few hours earlier at the Kennedy Space Center, Vice President Mike Pence celebrated the Apollo 11 anniversary with Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon... More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jul 21)
ON APOLLO 11 ANNIVERSARY, US ASTRONAUT BLASTS OFF TO THE SPACE STATION IN A RUSSIAN SOYUZ SPACECRAFT - NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan blasted off to the International Space Station from Kazakhstan Saturday, on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Morgan, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Russian Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft. More (Source: Fox News - Jul 20)
CHINA'S TIANGONG-2 SPACE STATION IS OFFICIALLY NO MORE - Chinese space station Tiangong-2 has officially ended its mission, and the orbital research facility’s entire existence. The platform de-orbited and burned up as planned at just after 9 AM ET on Friday, coming down over the South Pacific Ocean, as confirmed by the official Chinese space agency. The station weighed around nine U.S. tons at the time it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, but even so it was small enough that it almost entirely burned up in the process. Tiangong-2 was relatively small for a space station (when measured against the ISS), consisting of just a research module with enough space on board for only two astronauts. More (Source: Techcrunch - Jul 19)
CHINESE SPACE STATION TIANGONG-2 IS ABOUT TO FALL FROM SPACE - A space station is about to fall from the sky. The Chinese station Tiangong-2 is scheduled to drop out of orbit on 19 July and fall into the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Chile. Tiangong-2 – which translates as “heavenly palace” – was launched in September 2016, and it was never intended to be a permanent fixture in orbit. Instead, its purpose was to test technologies for China’s larger planned space station, whose main module is scheduled to launch in 2020. That space station is planned to be about one-fifth the size of the International Space Station. Tiangong-2 is far smaller. More (Source: New Scientist - Jul 19)
EUROPE'S WEEKLONG SATELLITE OUTAGE IS OVER—BUT STILL SERVES AS A WARNING - Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system largely regained service Thursday, a full week after a mass outage began on July 11. The European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency, known as GSA, said that commercial users would start to see coverage returning, but that there might be "fluctuations" in the system. What remains unclear is what exactly caused the downtime—and why it persisted for so long. The incident took down all of the GPS-like system's timing and navigation features other than "Search and Rescue," which helps locate people in remote areas. More (Source: WIRED - Jul 19)
NEW SATELLITE CONSTELLATIONS AIM TO IMPROVE IOT CONNECTIVITY OPTIONS - A new report unveils the long-term opportunity within the satellite space for the growth of IoT deployments, particularly in application verticals, such as agriculture and asset tracking, that are dealing with the unreliability of terrestrial infrastructures. “Terrestrial cellular networks only cover 20% of the Earth’s surface, while satellite networks can cover the entire surface of the globe, from pole to pole,” says Harriet Sumnall, Research Analyst at ABI Research. More (Source: Help Net Security - Jul 18)
KLEOS SPACE SATELLITES READY TO LAUNCH - Kleos Space, a space-powered Radio Frequency Reconnaissance data provider, completed all acceptance reviews and the satellites are mission-ready awaiting transport to RocketLab’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand. The satellites in the Kleos’ Scouting Mission are now secured in their protective Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) boxes – designed to prevent damage to the hardware in the event of a discharge of static electricity. The multi-satellite Scouting Mission system aims to form the foundation of a constellation that delivers a global picture of hidden maritime activity, enhancing the intelligence capability of government and commercial entities when Automatic Identification System (AIS) is defeated, imagery is unclear, or targets are out of patrol range. More (Source: Via Satellite - Jul 17)
NASA ASTRONAUTS CELEBRATE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MOON LANDING ON BOARD THE SPACE STATION - NASA Astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague join the world in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing — only, they do it from around 250 miles (~400 km) above the Earth's surface on board the International Space Station. More (Source: Lincoln Journal Star - Jul 17)
EU'S GPS SATELLITES HAVE BEEN DOWN FOR FOUR DAYS IN MYSTERIOUS OUTAGE - Galileo, the EU's global navigation satellite system, has been down for four days, since July 11, following a mysterious outage. All Galileo satellites are still non-operational, at the time of writing. According to a service status page, 24 of the 26 Galileo satellites are listed as "not usable," while the other two are listing a status of "testing," which also means they're not ready for real-world usage. More (Source: ZDNet - Jul 15)
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