April 16th, 2018
Author: 
Posted in 
Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) sponsored Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Aerospace Security Project’s “Space Threat Assessment 2018” which aggregates the open-source information on counterspace capabilities for policymakers and the general public. Go to: https://aerospace.csis.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Harrison_SpaceThreatAssessment_FULL_WEB.pdf Also, AIA is launching “SKYFAIL: What Happens When America’s Satellites Go Down” […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is now performing Sol 2024 science duties. Ken Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist; at the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona reports that the rover completed a Sol 2020 drive, “placing the vehicle in a good position for contact science on the ‘Waternish’ conglomerate.” To sample the diversity of clasts in Waternish, the Sol 2022 […]
Earth-i has released its first full-color video of Earth taken from space by its commercial satellite — VividX2 — launched in January. The VividX2 makes use of an Ultra High Definition camera that captures high-resolution images for any location on Earth – and also films up to two minutes of video at a time as […]
The word from a global network of satellite watchers is that the secretive Air Force X-37B space plane on its Orbital Test Vehicle-5 (OTV-5) mission has been spotted. OTV-5 ‘s flight began September 7, 2017, when the robotic spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Chance […]
The Environmental Defense Fund is eyeing its own satellite – MethaneSAT — to collect data from around the world about methane pollution and make it publicly available. Doing so would allow companies, governments, investors, and concerned citizens to target pollution control efforts where they’re most needed. According to the EDF, cutting methane emissions is the […]
Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reviving the National Space Council to help fuel a new space economy and harness government and private investments to return humans to the moon and on to Mars. POLITICO staged on April 12 a deep-dive conversation about what the National Space Council has accomplished so […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2021 tasks. Reports Ken Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist at the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona, a top science priority for researchers working the rover is to acquire all of the data needed to adequately characterize the rocks at the current location before the robot drives away. Recently discussed […]
China is readying its Chang’e-4 lunar probe for liftoff later this year. While attempting the first landing on the Moon’s far side – it’s got a “seedy side” too. According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, the probe will carry a tin containing seeds of potato and arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to cabbage […]
The Secure World Foundation (SWF) has issued a new report – Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment – that focuses on space security. “Over the last several years, there has been growing concern from multiple governments over the reliance on vulnerable space capabilities for national security, and the corresponding proliferation of offensive counterspace capabilities […]
