CHEOPS SATELLITE LIFTS OFF TO STUDY PLANETS BEYOND SOLAR SYSTEM - Europe’s Cheops planet-hunting satellite has left Earth a day after its lift-off was delayed by a technical rocket glitch during the final countdown. A 30cm telescope aboard has been designed to measure the density, composition and size of numerous exoplanets, which orbit stars beyond our solar system. According to the European Space Agency (Esa), Cheops will observe bright stars that are already known to be orbited by planets.   More
(Source: The Guardian - Dec 19)

ARIANESPACE LAUNCHES ESA’S CHEOPS SATELLITE TO STUDY EXOPLANETS - A Soyuz rocket successfully launched an Italian Earth observation satellite Dec. 18, with the European CHEOPS mission to analyze exoplanets and three small auxiliary payloads also along for the ride. The four-stage Russian Soyuz Guiana Space Center in French Guiana lifted off at 03:54 Eastern Wednesday, marking the 23rd Soyuz mission for Arianespace from the Guiana Space Center. A previous attempt one day earlier was scrubbed due to a launcher software issue.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Dec 18)

CAPELLA SPACE TO LAUNCH SEVEN RADAR SATELLITES IN 2020 AS IT PREPARES FOR COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS - Space-based radar imagery provider Capella Space will launch seven satellites and start commercial operations in 2020, the company announced Dec. 16. The San Francisco-based startup deployed one small synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite in December 2018 to test the service. The next seven it plans to launch in 2020 are a new design, Payam Banazadeh, CEO and founder of Capella Space, told SpaceNews.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Dec 17)

JAPAN TO LAUNCH INTELLIGENCE-GATHERING SATELLITE IN JANUARY - Japan will launch an H2A rocket carrying a government optical intelligence-gathering satellite in January from a launch site in southwestern Japan, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said Monday. The device will join the country's seven other reconnaissance satellites believed to be utilized for purposes such as monitoring development in North Korean missile sites.   More
(Source: Kyodo News Plus - Dec 17)

CHINA COMPLETES CORE OF BEIDOU GLOBAL SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEM - Two Chinese Beidou navigation satellites successfully launched Monday on top of a Long March 3B rocket, completing the core of China’s independent positioning and timing network ahead of the start of global service next year. The 184-foot-tall (56-meter) Long March 3B rocket lifted off from the Xichang space base in southwestern China’s Sichuan province at 0722 GMT (2:22 a.m. EST; 3:22 p.m. Beijing time) Monday, according to statements issued by the country’s top state-owned aerospace contractor.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 17)

SPACEX FALCON 9 LAUNCHES HEAVYWEIGHT SATELLITE INTO ORBIT, NAILS ROCKET LANDING - SpaceX launched its 13th mission of the year Monday (Dec. 16) as a twice-flown Falcon 9 booster took to the skies for the third time carrying a satellite for a Singapore-based startup and Japanese broadband provider. The Falcon 9 rocket lit up the skies over Florida's Space Coast as it carried its payload, a heavyweight communications satellite, into space from Space Launch Complex 40 here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Liftoff occurred at 7:10 p.m. EST (0010 GMT)   More
(Source: Space.com - Dec 17)

GAOFEN SATELLITES UPGRADE CHINA'S CIVILIAN MAPPING PRACTICE - On December 10, China unveiled the first batch of high-resolution, three-dimensional images of Earth from its latest mapping satellite, Gaofen-7, marking the country's effort to ramp up its technical capacity for observing the planet. The satellite, launched on November 3, is China's first civil-use, optical transmission, three-dimensional surveying and mapping satellite that reaches sub-meter definition.   More
(Source: CGTN - Dec 16)

WHY IN THE NEXT DECADE COMPANIES WILL LAUNCH THOUSANDS MORE SATELLITES THAN IN ALL OF HISTORY - If a handful of space companies succeed, the next decade will see more satellites put into orbit around the Earth than all the satellites launched since Sputnik 1 in 1957. While SpaceX makes up the lion’s share of these plans, together with OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, the four companies have announced the intention to launch as many as 46,100 satellites in the next few years. That’s more than five times the amount of objects sent to space in the past 60 years, which numbers just shy of 9,000 according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.   More
(Source: CNBC - Dec 16)

KEPLER TO LAUNCH TWO BATCHES OF NANOSATELLITES ABOARD SPACEX’S FALCON 9 - Small-satellite startup Kepler Communications is teaming up with SpaceX to make good on its deployment goals for its first nanosatellite constellation. SpaceX will carry two separate batches of nanosatellites from Kepler aboard its Falcon 9 launch vehicles. Kepler Communications, a Toronto-based space startup, will be building out a low-power, direct IoT connectivity satellite-based network, as well as a more high-capacity network powered with the same satellites to provide high-speed data transfer capabilities.   More
(Source: TechCrunch - Dec 14)

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