SUCCESSFUL HAM RADIO CONTACT BETWEEN STUDENTS AND SPACE STATION EXCITES AND INSPIRES - “My best day as a teacher!” That was educator Kathryn Craven’s exuberant reaction following a successful October 22 ham radio contact between International Space Station (ISS) crew member Serena Auñón-Chancellor, KG5TMT, and youngsters at Ashford School in Ashford, Connecticut. ARRL Headquarters provided equipment for the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS)-sponsored event, and several ARRL Headquarters staffers were among those assisting in setting up the station, working with teachers, students, and the media, shooting photos, and offering other support.    More
(Source: ARRL - Oct 25)

CHINESE SATELLITE STARTUP SPACETY TO LAUNCH FOUR SATELLITES ON OCTOBER 29 - A Chinese small satellite startup is set to launch a range of satellites on three rocket flights before the end of 2018, starting with four CubeSats on a Long March 2C on Monday. Four satellites were dispatched to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the first week of October ready to be sent into a 500-km Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). The satellites piggybacking on the China-France Oceanography Satellite (CFOSAT) will launch using a Long March 2C, scheduled to launch on October 29.   More
(Source: GBTIMES - Oct 25)

RUSSIAN SOYUZ ROCKET WILL LAUNCH ASTRONAUTS TO SPACE STATION BY CHRISTMAS, NASA CHIEF SAYS - The next set of crewmembers should launch toward the International Space Station in December, despite the failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket earlier this month, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said. That failure occurred Oct. 11, causing the Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan just minutes after liftoff. The investigation into the incident has been productive, and the Soyuz rocket likely won't be grounded for too much longer, Bridenstine said today (Oct. 23) during a meeting of the U.S. National Space Council in Washington, D.C.   More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 24)

RUSSIA’S SPACE AGENCY TO SPECIFY DATE FOR ISS CREW RETURN AND NEXT LAUNCH AFTER OCTOBER 30 - The date for the current crew of the International Space Station (ISS) to return to Earth and the launch of a new expedition will be determined after the probe of the Soyuz-FG incident is completed, State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS on Monday. "The date for the landing of the current crew and the launch of the next expedition, as well as the date for a spacewalk [to inspect a hole in the hull of the manned Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft docked to the ISS] will be determined after the commission probing the Soyuz-FG booster incident completes its work, i.e. after October 30," Roscosmos said.    More
(Source: TASS - Oct 23)

HOW MANY SPACE STATIONS DOES THIS PLANET NEED? - At one end of Bigelow Aerospace’s factory is a mock-up of a gargantuan home for future astronauts. With a unique design — it could be packed into a rocket, then unfurled in space — it would comfortably house a dozen people as a voluminous space station or serve as a building block of a moon base. “It’ll be a monster spacecraft by any current standards,” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company’s namesake founder, at a news conference in February. This is Olympus, named after the mythological home of the Greek gods and a measure of Mr. Bigelow’s ambitions for building settlements in space.   More
(Source: New York Times - Oct 23)

TACTICAL SAT HEADED FOR ORBIT, TESTING - Raytheon Co. has delivered the first of what it hopes will be a constellation of small, “disposable” satellites designed to give low-echelon ground forces in remote locations on-demand access to space imagery. Those squads and tactical teams currently lack access to satellite imagery provided by military or commercial platforms. Hence, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched a research effort in 2012 nicknamed “SeeMe,” for Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements. The DARPA program has since been cancelled, but Raytheon continued internal development of a prototype satellite designed to quickly deliver high-resolution battlefield imagery comparable to commercial satellites.   More
(Source: EE Times - Oct 22)

WHAT IT'S LIKE TO TRAVEL TO SPACE, FROM A TOURIST WHO SPENT $30 MILLION TO LIVE THERE FOR 12 DAYS - Elon Musk's SpaceX has had a lot of attention recently for announcing that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be its first customer for a private space flight around the moon. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin reportedly plans to start selling $200,000 to $300,000 tickets in 2019 to send tourists on 11-minute suborbital space flights. And Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has sold 650 tickets to space (at about $250,000 a pop) with its first "more than tantalizingly close," according to Branson.   More
(Source: CNBC - Oct 22)

ARIANE 5 LAUNCHES TWO SATELLITES ON 7-YEAR VOYAGE TO MERCURY - A powerful European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off from French Guiana late Friday and boosted a pair of satellites into space for a seven-year plunge into the inner solar system, a voyage requiring seven planetary flybys to slow down enough in the sun’s gravitational clutches to slip into orbit around hellish Mercury. The $1.9 billion BepiColombo project is only the second, after NASA’s MESSENGER mission, to attempt putting a spacecraft into orbit around the solar system’s innermost planet, one of the most technically challenging missions ever attempted by the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 21)

CHINA PLANS TO LAUNCH AN 'ARTIFICIAL MOON' TO LIGHT UP THE NIGHT SKIES - The night skies might soon have company: Chinese scientists are planning to launch an artificial moon into orbit by 2020 to illuminate city streets after dark. Scientists are hoping to hang the man-made moon above the city of Chengdu, the capital of China’s southwestern Sichuan province, according to a report in Chinese state media. The imitation celestial body — essentially an illuminated satellite — will bear a reflective coating to cast sunlight back to Earth, where it will supplement streetlights at night.   More
(Source: TIME - Oct 20)

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