A Long March 4B (CZ-4B) launch vehicle was launched at 0737 GMT on 27 December from Taiyuan in China. It carried the Gaofen 11-04 high resolution imaging satellite into orbit. The spacecraft is believed to be a military reconnaissance satellite. The spacecraft is...
NASA has returned to Space X to launch the second Sentinel-6 satellite. In a contract announced on 20 December SpaceX will launch Sentinel-6B/Jason-CS B satellite in November 2025 using a Falcon 9 rocket. This contract is valued at US$94 million. The mission will...
While maiden flights of new rockets are known to be risky, with a failure rate of around 40 per cent according to the Seradata SpaceTrak database, second flights are considerably less so. Nevertheless, they still have a failure rate of around 19-20 per cent. And so it...
Satellite manufacturer and operator Maxar Technologies has been acquired by global private equity investor group Advent International in a US$6.4 billion deal. The all-cash transaction was announced on 16 December. US-based Advent, which had US$89 billion in assets...
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA at 2248 GMT on 16 December 2022. The vehicle was carrying O3b mPOWER 1 & 2, a pair of 1,200 kg Boeing 702X bus communications satellites, on their way to medium Earth...
Lithuanian smallsat manufacturer NanoAvionics – now known as Kongsberg NanoAvionics – has been awarded satellite contracts from two French companies. ONERA On 30 November 2022 ONERA ordered two CubeSats from Kongsberg NanoAvionics, the first 8U and the...
