SSI News
Two Falcon 9 launches in one day: Carrying “Crew 5” humans to ISS and 52 Starlink Group 4-29 comsats
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on the East coast of the US, at 1600 GMT on 5 October. The vehicle was bearing Crew Dragon which carried the Crew 5 human astronaut mission. It was the fifth operational crewed...
Atlas V launch puts SES 20 and 21 comsat pair into orbit
In a rare commercial flight for United Launch Alliance (ULA), an Atlas V rocket successfully launched a pair of medium-class communications satellites, SES-20 and SES-21, en route to their final geostationary Earth orbit. ULA’s Atlas V rocket was in its 531/GEM-63...
India loses its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) after eight years
India's Mars probe, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), has ceased to function over eight years after its launch on 5 November 2013, according to recent reports. It is also over seven years since its post-launch design life, of 1.5 years, expired. Communications were lost...
IAC 2022 Paris report & sketch: “Space4all” – at least in theory
There are many space conferences every year, some specialising in military space hardware and applications, some aimed squarely at the commercial market, but when it comes to international space flight – and especially space agencies – there is perhaps only one...
Firefly launches its Alpha rocket but undershoots planned orbit…though it still gains Victus Nox TacRS mission (Updated)
After a last-second abort delayed a launch the day before, start-up Firefly Aerospace launched the Firefly Alpha from Vandenberg, US, at 0701 GMT on 1 October 2022. The vehicle carried seven payloads to orbit: Serenity II, TechEdSat-15 and five picosats, Genesis-G and...
ISS gets Italian commander as Soyuz MS-21 leaves the space station and returns to Earth
The Italian ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoferetti took command of the International Space Station (ISS) from previous commander Oleg Artemiev on 28 September, just before he and his crew mates Denis Matveev and Sergei Korsakov boarded their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft ready...
Cancelled Soyuz launches cost OneWeb US$229 million
British satellite operator OneWeb took a US$229 million hit for terminating its Soyuz launch contract in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The sizeable penalty, totalling US$229.2 million, was revealed as an impairment charge in the company's annual report....
European connection: Unseenlabs orders six more satellites from GomSpace
French new-space company Unseenlabs has ordered another six 6U-CubeSats from nanosatellite manufacturer and operator GomSpace, to expand its growing fleet. The six new satellites, which will be modelled on an upgraded platform jointly developed with Unseenlabs, will...
Small satellite orders Sept round up: Space Robot servicers, Rashid lunar rovers, QKD coders, methane monitors and radar sats
The month of September 2022 saw a spate of small satellite orders (plus some shared rides) made. These included: US Start-up Rogue Space Systems is planning a pair of satellites dubbed a cubesat-class spacecraft dubbed Space Robot to service and repair small...
DART strikes asteroid Dimorphos in orbit-changing experiment
There have long been concerns that the Earth could one day be threatened by the impact of a large object – usually an asteroid – from space. Scientists have mooted various ways of planetary defence ranging from nuclear missile strikes to asteroid deflection...
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