Washington (AFP) Sept 13, 2021
For the first time on Wednesday, SpaceX is due to send into orbit a crew made up entirely of complete novices, without a professional astronaut on board. The four passengers are supposed to embody the opening-up of space to everyone, giving the mission its name: Inspiration4. A billionaire, Jared Isaacman, is behind the project. It was he who chartered the mission, at his own expense,

Washington (AFP) Sept 13, 2021
A few minutes of weightlessness, or a few days. A short hop above the Earth's atmosphere, or a journey to the Moon and back... the era of space tourism is upon us, and - for those who can pay - it comes with many options. This year has been an important one for the up-and-coming sector, with a slew of new missions announced. Here is the state of play. - SpaceX - 1/ INSPIRATION4

Washington (AFP) Sept 13, 2021
SpaceX is set to launch four people into space Wednesday on a three-day mission that is the first to orbit the Earth with exclusively private citizens on board, as Elon Musk's company enters the space tourism fray. The "Inspiration4" mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spaceships respectively

Paris (AFP) Sept 8, 2021
The French defence ministry on Wednesday announced plans to significantly boost the country's four-year-old cyber warfare force, citing the "growing number and gravity" of hacking attacks on the country. The government had already planned to add an additional 1,100 recruits to a unit created in response to the growing number of cyber attacks on the West, mostly blamed on Russia and China.

Sydney, Australia (The Conversation) Sep 09, 2021
Step by step, Australia is inching its way towards more autonomy in defence. On Wednesday, Defence Minister Peter Dutton was reported to have signalled greater access to US missile technology will be a key test of the US-Australia alliance at a closed meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia. In March Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the defence department woul

Redondo Beach CA (SPX) Sep 09, 2021
Northrop Grumman Corporation has successfully demonstrated a data link for connecting aircraft in highly contested airspace for long-range command and control through an open architecture network. This experiment is a critical milestone in the evolution of a distributed multi-domain battle management command and control architecture that maintains decision superiority for the U.S. military and a

Xichang (XNA) Sep 13, 2021
China successfully launched a new direct broadcast satellite (DBS) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province Thursday. The satellite, Zhongxing-9B, was launched at 7:50 p.m. (Beijing Time) by a Long March-3B carrier rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully. The new DBS is designed to run for 15 years and will be operated by the China Sate

Washington DC (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), an innovator in satellite and multi-transport technologies and networks for 50 years, and OneWeb, the low Earth orbit satellite communications company, has announced that they have signed a distribution agreement in the U.S. focused on enterprise services. In India, the parties have entered into an MOU for a strategic agreement to distribute services to larg

Netanya, Israel (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
Orbit Communication Systems Ltd. reports that the Orbit MPT-30-Ku multi-purpose terminal (MPT) has received full qualification for use with the Intelsat FlexAir for Government service offering. FlexAir is a global end-to-end managed service solution that delivers powerful, secure and flexible connectivity for a variety of government airborne missions, including enroute, ISR and VIP applica

Brighton UK (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
Physicists at the University of Sussex have discovered that black holes exert a pressure on their environment, in a scientific first. In 1974 Stephen Hawking made the seminal discovery that black holes emit thermal radiation. Previous to that, black holes were believed to be inert, the final stages of a dying heavy star. The University of Sussex scientists have shown that they are in