DEVELOPMENT: CHINA TO LAUNCH FIRST STUDENT SATELLITE FOR SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION - China’s first nano-satellite with primary and middle school students involved in the development and building process will be launched into space Friday. The satellite, named after late Premier Zhou Enlai, was sent from its production base in Huai’an Youth Comprehensive Development Base in east China’s Jiangsu Province to Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China’s Gansu Province, where a “CZ-11” solid fuel rocket is scheduled to put it into orbit Friday. More (Source: Vanguard - Jan 18)
NEW U.S. MISSILE-WARNING SATELLITE SET FOR LAUNCH AT CAPE CANAVERAL - The U.S. military's newest missile-warning satellite is set to lift off later this week just as tensions continue to mount over North Korea's ICBM program. Crews at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, are preparing to launch the SBIRS GEO Flight-4 satellite on Thursday (Jan. 18) from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. "Everything is progressing toward the ULA Atlas V launch carrying the Space Based Infrared System GEO Flight 4 mission for the U.S. Air Force," ULA announced on Monday. More (Source: Space.com - Jan 18)
ISS ORBIT RAISED BY 400 METERS - The medium height of the International Space Station’s (ISS) flight orbit was raised by 400 meters with the help of the engines of the Zvezda module on Wednesday, Russia’s Mission Control told TASS. "The propulsion system of the Zvezda module has worked for 16 seconds. According to preliminary calculated data, the maneuver has increased the medium height of the ISS’s flight orbit by 0.4 kilometer to 404.3 km," Mission Control said. The engines of the ISS module were switched on at 23.15 Moscow time. The adjustment aimed to create ballistic conditions for bringing a Progress-MS-08 resupply ship into orbit. The space freighter’s launch is scheduled for 11 February 2018. More (Source: TASS - Jan 18)
A SPACE STATION IS FALLING TO EARTH. HERE'S WHERE IT COULD LAND - A defunct Chinese space station is expected to plunge to Earth from its orbital perch in late March. The Tiangong-1 station will mostly burn up as it plummets through Earth’s atmosphere. Some fragments could survive the fiery reentry, but experts say the risk to humans on the ground is small. “I personally wouldn’t be fearful at all about being struck by space debris,” said Dr. Andrew Abraham, a senior member of the technical staff at the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research organization based in El Segundo, California, that has been modeling the 18,000-pound station's reentry path. More (Source: NBC News - Jan 18)
FOR THE FIRST TIME, A NASA MISSION TO STUDY SPACE WEATHER WILL LIVE ON A COMMERCIAL SATELLITE - At the end of this month, NASA is launching a new mission to space to better understand how energetic particles mingle in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere in what’s known as space weather. And for the first time, the mission won’t rely on a full satellite to gather data from orbit, but on a single scientific instrument that will live on a commercial satellite. The host probe is SES-14, a satellite built and controlled by Luxembourg-based operator SES. When it launches at the end of January on a European Ariane 5 rocket, SES-14 will eventually climb to an orbit about 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface, with the NASA instrument positioned toward our planet. More (Source: The Verge - Jan 17)
JAXA POSTPONES LAUNCH OF SATELLITE DUE TO LIGHTNING - The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said Monday it will postpone the Wednesday launch of its third Epsilon solid-fuel rocket due to expected bad weather. The space agency now aims to launch the three-stage, 26-meter rocket from Uchinoura Space Center in the town of Kimotsuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, on Thursday morning, at the earliest. More (Source: The Japan Times - Jan 16)
WELCOME TO THE AGE OF MICRO SATELLITE SWARMS - In late 2017, Google admitted to tracking user location data no matter what location settings were enabled. About a month later, Chinese officials showcased the prowess of their extensive surveillance system when they tracked down and apprehended a BBC reporter in only seven minutes. All in all, “Big Brother” seems to be a growing reality in our day-to-day lives. This constant surveillance might be getting a boost thanks Finnish tech start-up ICEYE, which aims to launch a fleet of sub-100kg radar micro-satellites. More (Source: Futurism - Jan 16)
NEW U.S. MISSILE-WARNING SATELLITE SET FOR LAUNCH AT CAPE CANAVERAL - The U.S. military’s newest missile-warning satellite is set to lift off later this week just as tensions continue to mount over North Korea’s ICBM program. Crews at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, are preparing to launch the SBIRS GEO Flight-4 satellite on Thursday from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. “Everything is progressing toward the ULA Atlas V launch carrying the Space Based Infrared System GEO Flight 4 mission for the U.S. Air Force,” ULA announced on Monday. The forecast shows an 80 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for the planned 7:52PM EST liftoff on Thursday. More (Source: SpaceNews - Jan 16)
DOUBTS ABOUT SPACEX RELIABILITY PERSIST AS ASTRONAUT MISSIONS APPROACH - We may never know the precise reason a billion-dollar spy satellite that was launched Jan. 7 on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket failed to reach orbit. Everything about the mission except the launch itself was secret, so even after a root cause for the loss is identified, few details will be available to the public. However, one thing can already be said for certain: the failed mission isn't going to help SpaceX overcome doubts about the reliability of its launch vehicles. More (Source: Forbes - Jan 16)
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