SSI News
Russia causes uproar with its “Donbass” message on side of Soyuz rocket carrying Progress MS-20 cargo craft to the ISS
With vicious fighting now occurring in the Donbass region of Ukraine three months into Russia's violent invasion of Ukraine, Russia's space agency and conglomerate, Roskosmos, showed no shame using its rockets to proclaim its political messaging. It has printed in...
The Great British race to reach orbit from UK (Updated)
The final flight in 1971 of Black Arrow, a British satellite carrier rocket developed in the 1960s, remains the first and only successful orbital launch to be conducted by the UK. Even then Black Arrow took off from Australian soil. The British space sector has waited...
Astroscale gets funding to demo satellite removal
While the ELSa-D docking test mission is not going to plan in orbit due to thruster issues, its owner/developer Astroscale did have something to smile about. It has received US$16 milion (€15 million) in funding from the European Space Agency (ESA) to demonstrate an...
French company Gama contracts NanoAvionics to build its first satellite
A French start-up Gama has contracted NanoAvionics to build its first satellite, GAMA ALPHA, a solar sail demonstration mission. The announcement released on 26 May outlines that it will be based on NanoAvionics' 6U CubeSat platform and is planned to launch in H2...
Telesat moves to smaller LEO comsat constellation as it demos its signals over India
While its competitors seem determined to add ever more numbers to their proposed or under construction satellite constellations, satellite operator Telesat has bucked the trend and reduced the size of its planned Telesat Lightspeed ensemble. Its original plan was to...
SpaceX launches 59 satellites on its Transporter-5 flight of Falcon 9
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, USA at 1835 GMT on 25 May 2022. Transporter-5 is the fifth "Transporter" rideshare mission from SpaceX. The reusable B1061 first stage, on its eighth flight, successfully landed back to...
A busy May for Musk: mulling over buying Twitter, fighting a sexual impropriety allegation, as SpaceX sells stock for funding
It has been a busy month for SpaceX and Tesla supremo Elon Musk. The world’s richest man grabbed headlines at least three times in May. His move to buy Twitter, driven by a well-known fondness for the social media platform and his support for “free speech”, came via a...
China launches three communication satellites on Long March 2C
A Chinese rocket, Long March 2C (CZ-2C), has been launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China at 1030 GMT on 20 May 2022, according to reports by Xinhua. The vehicle reportedly carried three “communication test satellites”, as yet unnamed, to lower Earth...
Atlas V launches Starliner OFT-2 test flight to ISS but spacecraft has a shaky orbital insertion (Updated)
NASA successfully launched an Atlas V N22/GEM-63 rocket, carrying Starliner OFT-2, from Cape Canaveral, USA, at 2254 GMT on 19 May – but not without some significant hiccups along the way. The launch which used a pair of GEM-63 solid rocket boosters (instead of the...
Russian military launches Bars-M 3 cartography reconnaissance satellite on Cosmos 2503 rocket
The Russian Ministry of Defence has successfully launched a Soyuz 2-1A from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia at 0803 GMT on 19 May 2022. The rocket is thought to have launched an electro-optical area surveillance satellite to a lower Earth Orbit (LEO)...
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