Satellite News

Astrobotic said it has won a Phase I NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to further develop sensors that three-dimensionally map uncooperative spacecraft and planetary bodies in real time.

Rocket Lab announced it has signed a deal with in-space manufacturing company Varda Space Industries to produce three Photon spacecraft that will integrate with their space factories, enabling high-value products to be manufactured in zero-gravity and returned to Earth in Varda’s re-entry capsule.

The United States Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center will partner with Astra Space, a wholly-owned U.S. Company based in Alameda, California, to perform a demonstration launch for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) from the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska later this month.

The U.S. Space Force’s Rocket Systems Launch Program Office, part of the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Launch Enterprise at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, announced the award of the first on ramp of the Orbital Services Program (OSP)-4 Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to ABL Space Systems Corp, Astra Space, Inc., and Relativity Space, Inc.

Alba Orbital and Exolaunch announced a services agreement to launch sixteen PocketQube satellites as part of Exolaunch’s mission onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle at the end of 2021.

Rocket: Antares 230+; Payload: Cygnus (NG-16); Date: 10 August 201, 2201 UTC; Launch site: Wallops Flight Facility, USA. Cygnus is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station around 1010 UTC on 12 August.

Astrolight, a start-up company specialising in free-space optical communication systems, has performed initial long-range ground test of its mobile optical ground station for LEO satellites, achieving Gigabit per second data rate over 10-kilometer distance.

Xplore Inc., a commercial space company providing Space as a Service, announced a co-operative Memorandum of Understanding with Accion Systems to provide spacecraft hosting services for the next generation of Accion’s flagship ion thruster, TILE.