AMAZON CLOUD BUSINESS REACHES INTO SPACE WITH SATELLITE CONNECTION SERVICE - Amazon's cloud business is launching a satellite connection service, marking the company's first public move into space-related hardware and a continuation of its efforts to support the growing industry. The company's AWS Ground Station unit is building a network of 12 satellite facilities around the world, Amazon announced on Tuesday, and planning to begin operations by the middle of next year. A ground station is the vital link for transmitting data to-and-from satellites in orbit.   More
(Source: CNBC - Nov 29)

2019 IS THE YEAR NANO-SATELLITES WILL DELIVER INTERNET ACCESS TO ALL - A Dutch start-up is to fire several nano-satellites into space this week in a move which will revolutionize global internet access. Hiber, which was co-founded in 2016 by five serial entrepreneurs including Laurens Groenendijk (who also co-founded JustEat and TreatWell) is the latest Internet of Things (IoT) business that could change the world. It is fair to say that the world is enjoying increasing internet penetration, with more and more areas of our planet becoming connected. As of June 2018, 55.1% of the world’s population has access to the internet, with a quarter of a billion new users added since 2017.   More
(Source: Forbes - Nov 28)

ETHIOPIA IS SET TO LAUNCH ITS FIRST SATELLITE INTO SPACE—WITH CHINA’S HELP - With Beijing’s assistance, Ethiopia is heading to space in just under a year. The Horn of Africa nation announced it would launch its first earth observatory satellite in Sept. 2019, with China footing much of the bill. Officials from both governments’ space agencies met both in August and November (in Amharic) to advance talks on technological transfer and sign cooperative agreements on space activities. Designed and built at a cost of $8 million, China will pay for $6 million of the capsule’s price, the head of the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI) at Addis Ababa University Solomon Belay Tessema told The EastAfrican newspaper. The satellite will be launched from China, but its command and control center will be based in Ethiopia.   More
(Source: Quartz - Nov 28)

ORBITAL REFLECTOR: THE ARTIST FIRING A SATELLITE INTO SPACE - Satellites are usually designed either to look back at Earth or look out into the universe. What if, wondered the American-born, Berlin-based artist Trevor Paglen, there was a satellite whose sole purpose was to be looked at itself? At 10.32am on Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to blast off from Vandenberg air force base, north of Santa Barbara, California, carrying Paglen’s Orbital Reflector, a kinetic sculpture in the form of a satellite that – all being well – will orbit the Earth for a couple of months before burning up as it re-enters the atmosphere.   More
(Source: The Guardian - Nov 28)

ISRO TO LAUNCH HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING SAT WITH 30 FOREIGN SAT SATELLITES ON NOV 29 - Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is gearing up to launch hyperspectral imaging satellite (HySIS), an earth observation satellite, from the Sriharikota launch centre on Thursday morning. Over 30 foreign commercial satellites will be launched along with primary payload HySIS by the PSLV C43 rocket. Talking to TOI, Isro chairman K Sivan said, “We are going to launch HySIS at 9.59 am on November 29 from Sriharikota. Over 30 foreign satellites, including nano and mini satellites, will also be launched along with the main payload. Out of the 30 commercial satellites, 23 are from the US.”   More
(Source: Times of India - Nov 26)

NEW CHINA-BRAZIL EARTH RESOURCES SATELLITE IN LAUNCH IN H2 2019 - China and Brazil will launch a new joint Earth resources satellite next year, a senior official within the Chinese space programme has stated. The China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A (CBERS-4A) will be launched in the second half of 2019, according to Li Guoping, secretary-general of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Thursday. Li assumed the role from Tian Yulong in September, and works under Zhang Kejian, who became CNSA administrator in May 2018.   More
(Source: GBTIMES - Nov 26)

RUSSIA MAY LAUNCH 3RD MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE ON DECEMBER 21 - The launch of the third Blagovest military communications satellite is planned for December 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a source in the domestic space industry told TASS on Thursday. "The launch of the Blagovest satellite is planned for December 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Proton-M carrier rocket," the source said. A final decision on the date and on the launch will be made by the state commission, the source said. A source in the space industry earlier told TASS that the Blagovest might be launched in the third ten-day period of December but declined to specify the date.    More
(Source: TASS - Nov 26)

IT WILL SOON BE POSSIBLE TO SEND A SATELLITE TO REPAIR ANOTHER - JET PACKS for satellites. According to Daniel Campbell, the boss of Effective Space, the British and Israeli firm which is building them, that is the way to think of the robotic spacecraft his company plans to start launching in 2020. The purpose of Effective Space’s devices, which it calls SPACE DRONEs, is to prolong the lives of communications satellites (com-sats) that would otherwise be decommissioned for lack of fuel for station-keeping—in other words, for maintaining their proper orbits. At the moment, about two dozen big geosynchronous com-sats (those with orbits exactly 24 hours long, which thus hover continuously over the same spot on Earth) are retired each year, most commonly because of fuel exhaustion.    More
(Source: The Economist - Nov 26)

NASA ANNOUNCES TARGET DATE FOR FIRST SPACEX CREW DRAGON FLIGHT - SpaceX is targeting Jan. 7 for launch of its first Crew Dragon commercial ferry ship on an unpiloted test flight to the International Space Station, NASA announced Wednesday, a major milestone in the agency’s drive to end its sole reliance on Russian Soyuz crew ships for carrying astronauts to orbit. If the shakedown flight goes smoothly — and if a NASA safety probe unveiled Tuesday doesn’t turn up any show stoppers — SpaceX could be ready to launch the first piloted Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket in the June timeframe, carrying veteran NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the space station.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 22)

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