LONG MARCH 2D TO SEND A DUO OF SUPERVIEW-1 SATELLITES INTO ORBIT - China is gearing up to conduct its first orbital flight of 2018. The mission, scheduled for Tuesday, January 9, will employ a Long March 2D booster to send two SuperView-1 Earth-observing satellites into space. The rocket is currently scheduled to lift off at around 3:20 GMT (10:20 p.m. EST on January 8) from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC) located in China’s Shanxi Province.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Insider - Jan 8)

SPACEX LAUNCHES SECRETIVE ZUMA SPACECRAFT - After more than a month of delays, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket vaulted toward the skies at 8 p.m. ET Sunday with the secretive payload. It launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The space exploration firm, which is headed by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, initially scheduled the Zuma mission last November. SpaceX gave a couple reasons for the schedule changes. At one point, SpaceX said it delayed the mission for "fairing testing." The fairing is the very top portion of the rocket that houses the payload. "Extreme weather" also slowed down the company's launch preparations.    More
(Source: CNN - Jan 8)

SPACEX TO LAUNCH SECRET NRO SATELLITE FOR US GOVT SUNDAY - Technology pioneer Elon Musk's aerospace firm, SpaceX, is preparing to launch a secretive spacecraft for an unnamed branch of the US government this weekend after postponing the event in November. Codenamed Zuma, the launch was initially scheduled for November from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Merritt Island, Florida. SpaceX delayed sending Zuma into space after concerns emerged about the nose cone protecting the payload from dynamic pressure and aerodynamic heating on its way out of the atmosphere.   More
(Source: Space Daily - Jan 6)

HERE ARE THE MAJOR SATELLITE LAUNCHES FOR 2018 - The year 2018 beckons us to new hopes, ambitions and opportunities and the expectation that this year is going to be better than the preceding years – more calm, more peaceful, less precarious and geared towards innovation, rapid progress and momentous strides in the field of space technology. Many satellites and spacecraft will be lifted and sent into orbital this year, and this will contribute more to our understanding of space and other phenomena on earth that impact us, including climate change, natural disasters, agricultural patterns, dwindling ice cover and ocean salinity, along with fostering an enabling mechanism for new disruptions.   More
(Source: Geospatial World - Jan 6)

ISRO READY FOR FIRST SATELLITE LAUNCH IN 4 MONTHS AFTER FAILURE IN AUGUST - For more than four months, all Indian rockets have been grounded after the country's first private-sector manufactured satellite was declared unsuccessful in August last year. ISRO, the country's premier space agency that handled the launch seems to have regained confidence and is ready for a lift-off on January 12, if all goes well. In what is seen as a big embarrassment to ISRO, the 41st mission of the PSLV, which carried the satellite, failed on August 31 as the satellite's protective heat shield did not drop off. A group of scientists and experts were investigating what went wrong.   More
(Source: NDTV - Jan 6)

SECRETIVE SPACEX MISSION SLIPS, MAY DELAY FALCON HEAVY DEBUT - The company's most mysterious launch yet has been delayed for nearly two months and just got pushed back again. SpaceX is now hoping to launch "Zuma" into orbit via one of the company's Falcon 9 rockets on Sunday after nearly two months of delays. What exactly Zuma is, though, is still a big secret. Northrop Grumman confirmed to me in November that it had contracted with Elon Musk's commercial space venture to do the launch on behalf of a US government agency, which it didn't name. It provided no other details about the payload   More
(Source: CNET - Jan 5)

A NEW SATELLITE WILL TEST WAYS TO CAPTURE SPACE DEBRIS - There is an awful lot of junk in space. The latest data from the European Space Agency suggest some 7,500 tonnes of it now orbits Earth. It ranges from defunct satellites and rocket parts to nuts, bolts, shards of metal and even flecks of paint. But something as small as a paint fleck can still do serious damage if it hits a working satellite at a speed of several thousand kilometres an hour. There have already been more than 290 collisions, break-ups and explosions in space. Given the likelihood that thousands of small satellites, some only a few centimetres across, will be launched over the next decade, many worry that large volumes of space near Earth will soon be rendered risky places for satellites (especially big, expensive ones) to be.   More
(Source: The Economist - Jan 5)

CHECK OUT THIS PHOTO OF THE SPACE STATION PASSING BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE SUN - Self-proclaimed amateur astronomer Alan Strauss took this photo of the sun on New Year's Day from a park in Tucson, Arizona. But do you see that faint stitching that's bisecting the sun's middle? That's the International Space Station. Strauss, the director of the University of Arizona's Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, has a PhD in education but enjoys dabbling in the cosmos like his colleagues. Sometimes, he said, when he finds out the ISS will be passing overhead, he finds out where he can see it and takes his telescope to catch the show.    More
(Source: CNN - Jan 5)

SPACEX: FALCON 9 WILL FINALLY LAUNCH WITH MYSTERY ZUMA PAYLOAD FRIDAY NIGHT - SpaceX is to launch its mysterious and heavily delayed Zuma satellite on Friday night. Attached to a Falcon 9 rocket, the contents of the craft are shrouded in mystery but it is believed to be carrying a U.S. government payload. The rocket is currently scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at some point between 8 and 10 p.m. ET, according to a forecast issued yesterday by a branch of the U.S. Air Force.   More
(Source: Newsweek - Jan 4)

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