Brisbane, Australia (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Australia's leading launch services company, Gilmour Space Technologies, has secured $61 million (approximately $47 million USD) from global investors in what is the largest private equity investment raised by a space company in Australia. The Series C round, which includes US-based Fine Structure Ventures, Australian venture capital firms Blackbird and Main Sequence, and Australian supera

Washington (AFP) June 25, 2021
A highly awaited US intelligence report on dozens of mysterious unidentified flying object sightings said most could not be explained, but did not rule out that some could be alien spacecraft. The unclassified report said researchers could explain only one of 144 UFO sightings by US government personnel and sources between 2004 and 2021, sightings that often were made during military trainin

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 29, 2021
SpaceX postponed a launch Tuesday to send 88 small satellites into orbit from Florida in what is known as a rideshare launch due to interference from a possible plane in the region, a SpaceX announcer said. "It looks like the [launch] range was a no go. There might have been an airplane in the area. We do have a backup opportunity tomorrow, but for today, that's going to do it for us,"

Guilford UK (SPX) Jun 29, 2021
The UK Royal Navy has awarded a 12 month contract extension to Airbus covering the continued provision of satellite-based maritime surveillance services for the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC). The contract follows the successful completion of a proof of concept phase, and will ensure the continued monitoring of areas of interest in UK waters and ultimately protect UK sovereign borde

Tehran (AFP) June 27, 2021
Iran has drones capable of flying 7,000 kilometres (more than 4,000 miles), the commander of its Revolutionary Guard force said Sunday. "We have drones which can fly 7,000 kilometres, without a pilot, and land back at the same spot or anywhere else," General Hossein Salami said in a speech broadcast by state television. He gave no other details but the new drone would give it a range of

Image: For Asteroid Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Shoemaker Impact Structure (formerly known as Teague Ring) in Western Australia.

As ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence probes the Didymos twin asteroid system, it will be joined by a pioneering pair of breadbox-sized ‘CubeSats’. Juventas will perform radar soundings while Milani will image the bodies in a wider range of colours than the human eye can see, prospecting the mineral makeup of individual asteroid boulders.

As ESA’s Hera mission reaches the Didymos double asteroid system, it will not be there alone: it will also serve as mothership for Europe’s first two ‘CubeSats’ into deep space. Juventas, performing subsurface radar sounding, is called after the daughter of Hera. The other, spectral surveyor Milani, takes the name of the researcher who began Europe’s asteroid risk monitoring system and came up with the original concept inspiring Hera and NASA’s DART – a double spacecraft mission for planetary defence.

Brisbane, Australia (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Australia's leading launch services company, Gilmour Space Technologies, has secured $61 million (approximately $47 million USD) from global investors in what is the largest private equity investment raised by a space company in Australia. The Series C round, which includes US-based Fine Structure Ventures, Australian venture capital firms Blackbird and Main Sequence, and Australian supera

Moscow (AFP) June 30, 2021
Russia on Wednesday successfully launched an unmanned space freighter carrying supplies to the International Space Station from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress spacecraft launched at 02:27 am Moscow time (2327 GMT) from the Kazakh steppes and reached its target orbit, the Roscosmos space agency said in a statement. Docking with the ISS is sch