WASHINGTON — The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate announced plans to open a new facility later this year focused on space environment research. 

The Skywave Technology Laboratory will be a 3,500 square foot, $3.5 million facility located in a remote area on Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, AFRL said March 18.

ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder mission to the Moon will carry an advanced satellite navigation receiver, in order to perform the first ever satnav positioning fix in lunar orbit. This experimental payload marks a preliminary step in an ambitious ESA plan to expand reliable satnav coverage – as well as communication links – to explorers around and ultimately on the Moon during this decade.

A student interning at ESA will soon see her work launched into space. Meadhbh Griffin of University College Dublin has spent the last five months writing and testing software for an experiment set to fly later this year on the Hungarian-led RadCube CubeSat.  While its main mission is to probe space weather in Earth orbit, RadCube will also host a miniature experiment to test how commercial computer memories withstand space radiation.

The latest episode of ESA Explores podcast series ‘Time and Space’ series is out now, with a focus on the launch of Europe’s Columbus laboratory.

Image: ESA's technical heart

Wiener Neustadt, Austria (SPX) Mar 18, 2021
ENPULSION, the market leader in small satellite propulsion with more than 60 thrusters in space, confirmed the first successful in-orbit commissioning and first uses of its new ENPULSION MICRO R3 thruster. Its partner OHB Sweden said in a statement: "We are keen to report on GMS-T that the in-orbit commissioning and first uses of the ENPULSION MICRO Thruster have been completed as expected

London, UK (SPX) Mar 18, 2021
A pocket atlas of Mars has been published that uses geographic techniques developed for terrestrial maps to reveal a wealth of information about the surface of the Red Planet, as well as its climate and cloud cover. The atlas is being presented this week at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The 84-page atlas is currently available in English, Hungarian and Czech, and will be

Washington DC (SPX) Mar 18, 2021
After completing a comprehensive review, the FAA approved the renewal of two Launch Operator Licenses for Orbital Sciences, LLC, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. The licenses are valid for five years and authorize the company to conduct flights of its Pegasus launch vehicle from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Orbital Sciences

Hawthorne CA (SPX) Mar 18, 2021
ThinKom Solutions, Inc. has developed a new product variant of its VICTS aero satellite communication antennas enabling more flexible installation choices and allowing for smaller distributed and embedded phased-array applications. The new product variant, which targets government and military beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) satellite communication markets, integrates the VICTS antenna, antenn