First Vega launch of the year orbits Italian PRISMA spacecraft
Lifting-off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 0151 GMT, an Arianespace Vega, light-lift vehicle has carried the Italian-made PRISMA (PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa) hyper-spectral, Earth-Imaging, satellite to a sun-synchronous orbit. The Italian-led...
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Opinion: How to get Brexit decided – the Todd Brexit referendum plan
To put an end to the disastrous uncertainty of the current Brexit impasse, a chagrin to the UK space industry and the nation's other industries who would mainly rather the UK was not leaving the EU at all, the UK needs another referendum to decide on whether the UK...
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Inmarsat entertaining take-over offer from private consortium
UK-based Inmarsat plc, a global provider of MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) products, announced on 19 March 2019, that they had received an non-binding cash offer for their company on 31 January, from a consortium of private investors. Their takeover bid is valued at...
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Musk confirms that ceramic tiles are still needed for Starship and that Texas will be a launch site…as NASA turns away from SLS
Jules Verne in his 19th century sci-fi books From Earth to the Moon and is sequel Around the Moon, had the designers of "Columbiad" super cannon wondering from which US state the cannon-launched shell-like spacecraft would be launched from. The finalists were Florida...
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WGS 10 comsat is launched by Delta IV
At 0026 GMT on 16 March 2019, In what would be one of the last flight of the Delta IV, a Delta IVM+ 5,4 launched the WGS 10 military communications satellite from the Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida. The ULA operated flight went as planned and the spacecraft...
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Marsh capture of JLT to go ahead but its aerospace arm goes to Gallaghers
While the US$5.6 billion proposed take over JLT (Jardin Lloyd Thompson) by the US-based broker Marsh & McClennan is set to be completed this spring, its aerospace division is going elsewhere. To assuage EU regulatory concern over competition specifically about the...
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Soyuz MS-12 crew get a sense of “déjà vu” as they are successfully launched to ISS
There was a sense of déjà vu for the crew of the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft as it was successfully launched by a Soyuz FG rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, at 1914 GMT on 14 March. Or at least it was for two of the three crew. For Cosmonaut...
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Axelspace orders Soyuz launch for three more sats
Having already had its GRUS-1A satellite launched aboard a Soyuz rocket in March, Axelspace Corporation announced on 12 March 2019 that it had contracted with GK Launch Services to launch the 80kg GRUS-1B and 1C satellites along with a sister satellite called Fukui...
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OneWeb takes up one of its three Ariane 6 options and decides to fly on maiden flight
When OneWeb took out its multi-launch booking of Soyuz rockets in 2015 with Arianespace, it also took three options to fly on the brand new (and yet to fly) Ariane 6. It has now decided to exercise one of these options, electing to fly on the maiden flight of the...
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Long March 3B puts Chinasat 6C into orbit
A Long March 3B-G2 (CZ-3B-G2) rocket successfully put into orbit the Chinasat 6C (Zhongxing 6C) communications satellite into a supersynchronous transfer orbit of 400603 x 181km at 181 km at 24.6 degrees inclination on its way to its final geostationary Earth orbit...
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