The not-quite-tangible reality of Virtual Ground Stations

The satellite communications industry could be just years away from being able to run modems and other ground station hardware in the cloud, although many technical challenges remain to be solved.
The post The not-quite-tangible reality of Virtual Ground Stations appeared first on SpaceNews.
Viasat wins $325 million U.S. Special Operations Command contract

The U.S. Special Operations Command awarded Viasat a $325 million contract to provide communications equipment and networking services over the next five years.
The post Viasat wins $325 million U.S. Special Operations Command contract appeared first on SpaceNews.
Space Force establishes permanent presence in Indo-Pacific region

The Space Force on Nov. 22 formally established a unit within U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
The post Space Force establishes permanent presence in Indo-Pacific region appeared first on SpaceNews.
Family portrait
Image:
The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module (left), Earth (middle) and the Moon (right) are captured in this ‘family portrait’ by Orion’s solar array camera during the spacecraft’s closet approach to the lunar surface.
Six days into the 25-day Artemis I mission, the Orion spacecraft performed a key manoeuvre: just a little more than 130 km from the lunar surface, the main engine on the European Service Module – a repurposed Space Shuttle engine that is now on its 20th spaceflight – fired for just under 150 seconds to push the spacecraft and head towards a lunar orbit using
France, Germany and Italy sign agreement on launch vehicle development

An agreement among three European countries could help secure near-term funding for launch vehicle development but have a bigger effect in the long term on how future projects are financed.
The post France, Germany and Italy sign agreement on launch vehicle development appeared first on SpaceNews.
An exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before
The JWST just scored another first: a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies.
The telescope's array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of a "hot Saturn"-a planet about as massive as Saturn orbiting a star some 700 light-years away-known as WASP-39 b. While JWST and other space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, previously have Advanced Space leads first ever commercial mission to operate at the moon
Advanced Space LLC., a leading space tech solutions company, is the first commercial entity to own an operational satellite at the Moon. CAPSTONE, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, has finalized its insertion into a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).
Now that history has been made, the small spacecraft is ready to begin operations SpaceX Dragon supply ship launch scrubbed by bad weather
The launch of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station was scrubbed Tuesday afternoon because of bad weather, NASA officials said.
The CRS-26 mission had been set to launch on a new Falcon 9 rocket at 3:54 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The attempt was reset to Saturday at 2:20 p.m.
NASA engineers called a halt to the countdown at T-m Xi: China open to space exchanges, cooperation
President Xi Jinping reiterated on Monday China's wish to work with other nations to carry out space exploration and development. Xi wrote in a congratulatory letter to the United Nations/China 2nd Global Partnership Workshop on Space Exploration and Innovation that the country is willing to deepen its cooperation and exchanges with other nations to advance space exploration and the peaceful use Marines Must Fight for Space
Marines must contribute to the fight for space. No, this is not some far-flung future of Colonial or UN Space Command Marines fighting alien hordes. And despite its ongoing force transformation, the Marine Corps is not going to add a space-shuttle door-gunner military occupational specialty any time soon. The most recent "Force Design 2030 Update" argued that "the enduring function for [Stand-In 