SAN FRANCISCO – York Space Systems has learned a lot from operating its first production-model spacecraft in orbit for two years. The biggest takeaway, though, has been the need to automate satellite handling on the ground.

“In the first few months, it became clear it was going to require as many as 15 different people to operate a constellation for a specific customer,” Charles Beames, York Space Systems executive chairman, told SpaceNews.

SEOUL, South Korea — Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), which played a key role in developing South Korea’s recently launched CAS500-1 remote sensing satellite, will invest 1 trillion won ($880 million) over the next five years to expand its space business, including satellite production, according to its chief executive.

WASHINGTON — Slingshot Aerospace announced April 13 it won a $1.2 million Space Force contract for the development of software to help satellite operators visualize missile detection.

Slingshot teamed with Zoic Labs to develop a graphics tool that makes it easier for operators to view and interact with complex data collected by the Space Force’s overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensor satellites, said Melanie Stricklan, Slingshot’s co-founder and CEO.

Chicago IL (SPX) Apr 08, 2021
The long-awaited first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory show fundamental particles called muons behaving in a way that is not predicted by scientists' best theory, the Standard Model of particle physics. This landmark result, made with unprecedented precision, confirms a discrepancy that has been gnawing at researchers

HELSINKI — A Long March 7 rocket has arrived at China’s coastal Wenchang spaceport to facilitate the Tianzhou-2 supply mission to a soon-to-launch space station module.

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On 20 April 2021, ESA will host the 8th European Conference on Space Debris from Darmstadt, in Germany. Scientists, engineers, industry experts and policy makers will spend the virtual four day conference discussing the latest issues surrounding space debris. They will exchange the latest research, try to come up with solutions for potential problems and define the future direction of any necessary action.

There are currently over 129 million objects larger than a millimetre in orbits around Earth. These range from inactive satellites to flakes of paint. But no matter how small the item of debris, anything travelling up

WenchangBeijing (XNA) Apr 13, 2021
China's Long March-7 Y3 rocket, which will launch the cargo craft of China's space station, has arrived at its launch site in southern China's Hainan Province. The rocket, alongside the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft that has already been transported to the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, will be assembled and tested at the launch site, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said on Mo

Moscow (AFP) April 12, 2021
President Vladimir Putin called on Monday for Russia to remain a great power in space, as the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of the legendary flight that made Yuri Gagarin the first person in orbit. Russia's space industry has struggled in recent years and been hit by a series of mishaps, but the sending of the first human into space on April 12, 1961 remains a major source of natio

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Apr 13, 2021
Exolaunch, the leading rideshare services provider for the NewSpace industry and trendsetter in deployment solutions, has introduced its space tug program, featuring a new line of revolutionary orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) that will launch satellites to custom orbits in an environmentally responsible way - the first of its kind in the OTV industry. The company's space tug testing and flight

Washington DC (SPX) Apr 13, 2021
DARPA has awarded contracts for the first phase of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program. The goal of the DRACO program is to demonstrate a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system above low Earth orbit in 2025. The three prime contractors are General Atomics, Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin. Rapid maneuver is a core tenet of modern Department of Defense (D