NASA has released the selection statement that lays out the space agency’s reasoning for awarding Nanoracks, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman a total of $415.6 million to develop plans for private space stations under the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program. The facilities are designed to maintain a permanent U.S. presence in Earth orbit when the International Space Station (ISS) is retired in 2030.

In this story, we’ll look at the Northrop Grumman’s station. The project summary is drawn from publicly available information. Excerpts from the selection statement follow. Long paragraphs in the latter have been broken up to improve readability. Acronyms have been spelled out for the sake of clarity.

SpaceX is planning launches from opposite coasts within two hours of each other on Wednesday. A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the NROL-87 satellite from Vandenberg Space Force in California at 3:18 p.m. EST (12:18 p.m. PST/2018 GMT). The launch is for the National Reconnaissance Office. A Falcon 9 will launch another batch of Starlink broadband satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 4:51 p.m. EST (2151 […]

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — NASA’s first mission under the agency’s Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) Demonstration 2 contract is scheduled to launch four CubeSats to space no earlier than Feb. 5, 2022. The CubeSats, which make up the agency’s 41st Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) mission, will be the first VCLS launch from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Astra Space Inc’s first operational satellite launch aboard its Rocket 3.3.

• Delivering business grade LEO satellite services to rural, regional, and remote Australia
• “Fibre-like” high speed, low-latency connectivity
• First ever trial of OneWeb LEO backhaul in FSG’s Australian Neutral Host Pilot under the Federal Mobile Blackspot program
• Complete installation and management services to supply, install and support LEO customers
• Government, Enterprise, Agri Business, Mining, and Resources
• Trials to commence with Queensland and NT Government

LONDON — Field Solutions Holdings Limited (ASX: FSG), Australia’s leading rural and regional telecommunications carrier, has been appointed as a OneWeb Distribution Partner in Australia, delivering OneWeb’s LEO (low Earth orbit) high-speed, low-latency satellite services to rural, regional, and remote Australia.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

SpaceX unsuccessfully applied for NASA funding to begin work on adapting the Human Landing System (HLS) it is building to send American astronauts to the lunar surface into a commercial Earth orbiting space station, according to a newly released government document.

DUNDEE, UK, February, 01, 2022 (Bright Ascension PR) — Bright Ascension Ltd ., an industry leading space software technology provider, is pleased to announce that it has secured an additional £500k [US $675,100] of funding through private investments to support further expansion and development of its product offering. This follows the successful fund raising round completed by the company in August 2021, which raised £1M [US $1.35 million] of equity through the issue of new shares to match the development funding, previously awarded to Bright Ascension by the European Space Agency (ESA).

REDMOND, Wash. & San Diego, Calif., February 1, 2022 (Kymeta PR) – Kymeta (www.kymetacorp.com), the communications company making mobile global, and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: KTOS), a leading national security and space solutions provider, announced today a strategic partnership to jointly develop products and solutions that will enable modern, virtualized ground systems to better leverage the capabilities of next generation mobile satellite antennas.

Among the broader goals of the partnership are to advance the ability of ground systems to support, leverage, manage, and control electronically-steered and multi-purpose antennas to better support the capabilities of software-defined and multi-beam satellites. This effort will initially focus on joint development of a software-defined remote terminal that will support a variety of dynamic satellite connectivity applications, including support for multi-orbit use cases where connectivity to LEO, MEO, and GEO satellites through the same antenna are desirable.

• The dual use Italian Constellation at the Service of Security and Sustainability
• The enlarged 4 satellites final constellation will represent an extraordinary monitoring system guaranteeing greater performance and a significant increase in possible applications.
• Since 2008, the COSMO-SkyMed constellation has acquired approximately 2 million images, monitoring 7 billion square meters and generating vital data for our planet

ROME, 1 February 2022 (Thales Alenia Space PR) – The second satellite of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) constellation, built by Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%) and operated in orbit by Telespazio, a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%), was successfully launched today at 00.11 CET from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida (USA), on board of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

• Five-year partnership builds on existing technology collaboration
• Unlocks advanced image and geospatial products, and tailored AI insights for customers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Satellogic PR) — Satellogic Inc. (NASDAQ:SATL), a leader in sub-meter resolution satellite imagery collection, today announced a new partnership with Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE:PLTR), a leading builder of operating systems for the modern enterprise. Under the agreement, Satellogic will leverage Palantir’s Foundry platform, accelerating business processes, rapid image product delivery, AI model training, and enterprise-wide data integration. Palantir’s government and commercial customers will have access to Satellogic’s Aleph platform APIs to power their use of Palantir’s MetaConstellation and Edge AI capabilities.

Speech by EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton at the 14th EU Space Conference

“Check against delivery”

Dear Ministers and Member State representatives,
Chère Sophie Wilmès,
Honourable Members of the European Parliament,
Dear friends from the space sector,

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am delighted to open this European Space Conference. It is good to see you all in this room this morning.

Europe is a space power. It has the necessary expertise, industrial capacity, start-ups and assets to weigh in on the global stage. But there is no time for complacency.

The space sector is undergoing a massive transformation. 

On the one hand, the booming of private operators changes the business model of space, combining both large and small industry, space and digital ecosystems. This is a major opportunity for Europe. We need to unleash this potential.

NASA has released the selection statement that lays out the space agency’s reasoning for awarding Nanoracks, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman a total of $415.6 million to develop plans for private space stations under the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program. The facilities are designed to maintain a permanent U.S. presence in Earth orbit when the International Space Station (ISS) is retired in 2030.

In this story, we’ll look at the Nanoracks’ Starlab station. The project summary is drawn from publicly available information. Excerpts from the selection statement follow. Long paragraphs in the latter have been broken up to improve readability. Acronyms have been spelled out for the sake of clarity.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — The International Space Station is a unique laboratory that is returning enormous scientific, educational, and technological developments to benefit people on Earth and is enabling our ability to travel into deep space. The Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to extend space station operations until 2030 will enable the United States to continue to reap these benefits for the next decade while U.S. industry develops commercial destinations and markets for a thriving space economy.