Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jul 13, 2022
Planet Labs has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Planet Labs Germany GmbH, has signed a new contract with the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) to provide the agency with daily, high-resolution satellite data for crisis response, environmental and nature conservation, as well as forest and agricultural monitoring. Access to Planet's satellite data will help

Vancouver, Canada (SPX) Jul 13, 2022
The re-entry of abandoned stages of rockets left in orbit from space launches have a six to 10 per cent chance of severely injuring or killing a human being in the next decade, according to a new UBC study. Researchers say governments need to take collective action and mandate that rocket stages are guided safely back to Earth after their use, which could increase the cost of a launch, but

Moscow (AFP) Jul 15, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin has relieved the head of the country's space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, of his duties, according to a decree released by the Kremlin on Friday. The decree ordered Rogozin's dismissal "from the post of general director of the Roscosmos state space corporation." He was replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov.

Week in images: 11-15 July 2022

Discover our week through the lens

BlackSky Technology Inc. (NYSE: BKSY) received a $4.4 million award from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to support the second phase of the multi-year Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique (SMART) Program.

"As part of our work, BlackSky created a high-performance MLOps (machine learning operations) framework that was ultimately selected to perform as the core infrastructure to the entire SMART program," said Patrick O'Neil, BlackSky chief innovation officer. "The MLOps framework will extend BlackSky's Spectra AI tasking and analytics capabilities and accelerate the development of SMART tec

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 15, 2022
Each year, strong winds carry more than a billion metric tons - or the weight of 10,000 aircraft carriers - of mineral dust from Earth's deserts and other dry regions through the atmosphere. While scientists know that the dust affects the environment and climate, they don't have enough data to determine, in detail, what those effects are or may be in the future - at least not yet. Set to l

Long Beach CA (SPX) Jul 15, 2022
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has achieved a major milestone in Q2 with its MAX Flight Software now operating on 53 spacecraft, for a cumulative 161 years in space. Developed by Colorado-based Advanced Solutions Inc (ASI), which was acquired by Rocket Lab in October 2021, the off-the-shelf spacecraft flight software, MAX, supports a wide range of missions and all spacecraft subsystem

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Jul 15, 2022
A SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft carrying more than 5,800 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and other cargo is on its way to the International Space Station after launching at 8:44 p.m. EDT Thursday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy for the company's 25th commercial resupply services missi

Paris (ESA) Jul 15, 2022
The pressure is on at ESA's mission control. An ESA satellite dodges out of the way of a mystery piece of space junk spotted just hours before a potential collision. Now a crucial step in the spacecraft's ongoing journey to safer skies has to be quickly rescheduled, as violent solar activity related to the ramping up of the solar cycle warps Earth's atmosphere and threatens to drag it down

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 15, 2022
In 2016 and 2018, I was invited to Ukraine. I gave speeches about the Space Revolution at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, in Dnipro and other venues, and met with the Mayors, leaders of the Rada, the Ukrainian cosmonaut corps, and other space leaders, as well as several groups of their rising tech community. The folks I met there, just a couple of years after what they refer to as the "Mai