

KEPLER LAUNCHES FIRST INTERNALLY PRODUCED SATELLITES - Canadian startup Kepler Communications launched Sept. 28 the first two satellites built in its own facility as the company ramps up its plans to deploy a constellation for data and Internet of Things services. The two six-unit XL cubesats, known as Kepler-4 and Kepler-5 but nicknamed Antilles and Amidala, were among the 15 smallsat secondary payloads brokered by Exolaunch that launched on a Soyuz-2.1b from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 7:20 a.m. Eastern. The primary payload for the launch was a trio of Gonets satellites for the Russian government. More

(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 30)

RUSSIA LAUNCHES 3 GONETS COMMUNICATION SATELLITES, 18 INTERNATIONAL SMALLSATS - The Russian Aerospace Forces, itself a division of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, have launched a batch of three Gonets civilian communication satellites as well as 18 international rideshare payloads. Liftoff of the Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket occurred at 11:20 UTC (07:20 EDT) on Monday, 28 September 2020, from Site No. 43 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome — located 800 km north of Moscow. More

(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Sep 30)

AIR LEAKING FROM INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION BUT NO DANGER TO CREW - ROSCOSMOS AGENCY - The International Space Station is leaking air in above-normal volumes, but the leak presents no danger to the Russian-American crew, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday. The leak has been localised to one section of a service module and the crew, made up of U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, plan to eliminate it in the coming days, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted Roscosmos executive director Sergei Krikalev as saying. More

(Source: Reuters - Sep 30)

CHINESE AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITE LAUNCHES DELAYED - CAMSAT says the CAS-7A launch has been postponed until next May, and CAS-5A until next June. “Because of COVID-19, many things have been delayed,” CAMSAT’s Alan Kung, BA1DU, told ARRL. He said an announcement would be made closer to the announced launches. CAMSAT said last spring that CAS-7A would launch in mid-September; the launch has been postponed multiple times since first announced. CAS-5A was predicted to launch in October. More

(Source: ARRL - Sep 30)

FIRST OPERATIONAL CREW DRAGON LAUNCH SLIPS TO HALLOWEEN - NASA announced Monday that the launch of the first operational crew rotation mission to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is set for the predawn hours of Halloween, eight days later than previously planned. The Crew Dragon spaceship is scheduled to blast off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at around 2:40 a.m. EDT (0640 GMT) on Oct. 31, the space agency said. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 29)

UNITED LAUNCH ALLIANCE POSTPONES SPY SATELLITE LAUNCH AGAIN - United Launch Alliance postponed launch of a spy satellite for the U.S. Department of Defense on Monday due to lightning and stormy weather in the area near Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The company's powerful Delta IV Heavy rocket had been scheduled to carry the satellite aloft at 12:02 a.m. EDT Tuesday. More

(Source: UPI.com - Sep 29)

SPACEX DELAYS NEXT STARLINK SATELLITE FLEET LAUNCH DUE TO BAD WEATHER - SpaceX postponed the launch of a new fleet of Starlink internet satellites today (Sept. 28) due to bad weather at the mission's Florida launch site. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch 60 Starlink satellites from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:22 a.m. EDT (1422 GMT), but thick clouds over the launch site prevented the flight. More

(Source: Space.com - Sep 29)

UH SATELLITE TO COLLECT NEUTRONS IN SPACE - Neutron-1, a small satellite involving more than 100 University of Hawaiʻi students, faculty, staff and volunteers, will be launched on September 29 (delayed to October 1) on the ELaNa 31, NG-14 International Space Station (ISS) resupply mission from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. During the mission, Neutron-1 will measure neutrons in space and radiation coming from the Sun. More

(Source: UH System Current News - Sep 28)

CYGNUS NG-14 MISSION UPDATES - The launch of the Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus spacecraft is now scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 1, at 9:38 p.m. from Wallops Island, Virginia. Tune in to NASA TV to watch the launch live. Northrop Grumman, along with NASA, has rescheduled the Antares and Cygnus launch for the NG-14 mission to NET Thursday, Oct. 1, at 9:38 p.m. EDT due to unfavorable weather conditions. More

(Source: Northrop Grumman - Sep 28)

NASA LAUNCHING NEW SPACE TOILET AND MORE TO SPACE STATION THIS WEEK - A private cargo spacecraft will lift off from Virginia on Tuesday (Sept. 29), carrying tons of fresh supplies to the International Space Station, including scientific experiments, skincare from Estée Lauder and a brand-new space toilet. The mission, known as Cygnus NG-14, will be deliver 7,624 lbs (3,458 kilograms) of cargo on the14th flight for Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus spacecraft and the resupply craft's 13th mission to the International Space Station. More

(Source: Space.com - Sep 28)

SECRETIVE CHINESE LAUNCH SENDS TWO REMOTE SENSING SATELLITES INTO ORBIT - China added to its Earth observation capabilities with the clandestine launch of two satellites from Taiyuan late Saturday. The unexpected launch of a Long March 4B rocket carrying satellites HJ-2A (Huanjing-2A) and HJ-2B took place at 11:23 p.m. Eastern Saturday. While Chinese launches are rarely publicly announced ahead of time, the publishing of airspace closures usually provides a few days of notice. No notices were apparently issued ahead of the launch. More

(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 28)

ULA DELAYS LAUNCH OF SPY SATELLITE FOR 3RD TIME; 2 MORE LAUNCHES PLANNED - United Launch Alliance (ULA) has delayed the launch of its Delta IV Heavy NROL-44 mission for the third time in two days. The space company said that while the rocket is ready for launch, they are taking extra precautions to ensure that all issues are resolved with the swing arm retraction system. More

(Source: FOX 35 Orlando - Sep 28)

LIVE COVERAGE: SPACEX READIES FALCON 9 ROCKET FOR LAUNCH MONDAY - After an 11-day delay, SpaceX plans to deploy 60 more Starlink broadband satellites with a Falcon 9 rocket launch scheduled for 10:22 a.m. EDT (1422 GMT) Monday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket was originally supposed to launch from pad 39A at Kennedy on Sept. 17, but SpaceX scrubbed the countdown due to unfavorable conditions in the Atlantic Ocean, where the company's booster recovery vessel "Just Read the Instructions" was unable to maintain position for landing of the Falcon 9's first stage. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 28)

THE PANDEMIC IS SPEEDING UP THE SPACE INTERNET RACE - In vast swaths of the United States and the world, there are millions of people who don’t have reliable internet access. These unconnected people aren’t just in far-flung places like rural America or New Zealand or sub-Saharan Africa, either. There are plenty of people living in dense city centers who struggle to access affordable broadband. The pandemic has brought new urgency to the problem, and while companies like Google and Facebook have floated far-out ideas for solving this problem, the internet technology that’s most promising is also the one that’s already proven: satellite broadband. More

(Source: Vox - Sep 27)

U.K. TO REVISE STRATEGY FOR SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEM - The British government, seeking a replacement for the Galileo satellite navigation system, said it will consider alternatives to an original plan to develop its own satellite constellation. In a Sept. 24 statement, the British government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said an ongoing study to examine the feasibility of a U.K. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) will shift to one that will look at “new and alternative ways” of providing those services. More

(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 26)

NEW SENTINEL-6 SEA LEVEL SATELLITE ARRIVES AT CALIFORNIA LAUNCH SITE - The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft will launch from the U.S. West Coast aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in November. The world’s latest ocean-monitoring satellite has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California to be prepared for its November 10 launch. The product of a historic U.S.-European partnership, the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft touched down at Vandenberg in an Antonov 124 aircraft at around 10:40 a.m. PDT (1:40 p.m. EDT) on September 24 after a two-day journey from an IABG engineering facility near Munich, Germany. More

(Source: SciTechDaily - Sep 26)

DELTA 4-HEAVY LAUNCH DELAYED BY GROUND SYSTEM ISSUE - United Launch Alliance said Friday that the next launch attempt for its Delta 4-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral with a top secret U.S. government spy satellite will be delayed to early Sunday to address a problem with the launch pad’s swing arm retraction system. The mission was previously set for liftoff early Saturday. The launch time Sunday is set for 12:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT). More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 26)

MORE LEAK CHECKS AS CREW SPENDS WEEKEND IN RUSSIAN SEGMENT - As part of ongoing work to isolate the source of a slight increase above the standard cabin air leak rate, the Expedition 63 crew will once again spend the weekend inside the station’s Russian segment. All the space station hatches will be closed this weekend so mission controllers can again monitor the air pressure in each module with the goal of localizing the source of the increased rate. The test presents no safety concern for the crew. Commander Chris Cassidy and his crewmates Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin will stay in the Zvezda service module from Friday night into Monday morning. More

(Source: NASA - Sep 26)

ASTRONAUTS TAKE SHELTER AS SPACE STATION DODGES ORBITAL JUNK - The International Space Station just dodged a fast-moving hunk of orbiting junk. Controllers maneuvered the station away from a potential collision with a piece of debris today (Sept. 22) at 5:19 p.m. EDT (2119 GMT). They did so by firing the thrusters on a Russian Progress cargo spacecraft that's docked to the orbiting lab's Zvezda service module, NASA officials said in an update today. More

(Source: Space.com - Sep 25)

AIR FORCE TO LAUNCH NEW 'HARDENED' WAR SATELLITE BY 2022 - What if Air Force fighters and bombers were successfully attacking an enemy with absolute precision and exact targeting data when all of a sudden their GPS signals disappeared or got hacked? What if that threw off the guided missiles and ground-coordinates being assembled on the ground by friendly Joint Tactical Air Controllers? In a matter of minutes, attacks could be sent off-target, interrupted or simply made no longer accurate. Army-Air Force multi-domain collaboration might collapse. More

(Source: Fox News - Sep 25) Older news