WASHINGTON (AFNS) — John P. Roth will serve as the Acting Secretary of the Air Force as of Jan. 20, until the President nominates and the Senate confirms a permanent replacement.

Roth succeeds Barbara Barrett, who served as the 25th Secretary of the Air Force from Oct. 18, 2019, until Jan. 20.

Roth has served as the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller since January 2018. From May 2019 to December 2020, he also performed the duties of Under Secretary of the Air Force, a role he held from June to October 2019.

BRUSSELS (European Commission PR) — Today the Commission awarded two contracts for 12 Satellites (6 satellites each) for a total of €1.47 billion, to Thales Alenia Space (Italy) and Airbus Defence & Space (Germany) following an open competition.

With this, the Commission is initiating the launch of the 2^nd Generation of Galileo, the European satellite positioning system. The aim is to keep Galileo ahead of the technological curve compared to global competition and maintaining it as one of the best performing satellite positioning infrastructures in the world while strengthening it as a key asset for Europe’s strategic autonomy.

HOUSTON (Boeing PR) — Boeing recently completed its formal requalification of the CST-100 Starliner’s flight software in preparation for its next flight. The autonomous spacecraft will fly to the International Space Station during a second uncrewed flight test, Orbital Flight Test-2, in March, ahead of a first crewed flight with NASA astronauts later this year.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA is hosting a media briefing on Wednesday, Jan. 27, at 4:30 p.m. EST to discuss the upcoming landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. The event will air live on NASA TV, the agency’s website, and YouTube.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — Our understanding of the way fire behaves in space is expanding as the fifth in a series of NASA investigations ignited recently. The Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiment-V (Saffire-V) successfully tested larger, more dynamic fires for over 26 hours inside Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, following its primary mission of delivering supplies to the International Space Station.

BEIJING (CASC PR) — At 00:25 on January 20, the Long March 3B carrier rocket ignited and lifted off at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, and then sent the Tiantong-1 03 satellite into the scheduled orbit. The launch mission was a complete success.

MAHIA PENINSULA, NZ, Jan. 20, 2021 (OHB PR) — OHB Cosmos International, a company of OHB’s newly established business segment OHB DIGITAL, successfully launched the telecommunication satellite GMS-T on board an Electron launcher.

The satellite took off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula at 7.26 a.m. (UCT) on January 20th.The launch was performed only seven months after starting engineering activities for the satellite. After having reached the planned 1200 km/90 degree orbit the satellite has been activated and works as planned.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (SpaceX PR) — On Wednesday, January 20 at 8:02 a.m. EST, SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites to orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, completing the seventeenth Starlink mission. Following first-stage separation, Falcon 9 successfully landed for the eighth time on the “Just Read the Instructions” droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Falcon 9’s first stage booster rocket previously supported seven other […]

QUEENSLAND, 20 January 2021 (Gilmour Space Technologies PR) — Australia’s leading rocket company, Gilmour Space Technologies, has ushered in the New Year with a successful hot fire of the world’s largest single-port hybrid rocket engine.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Roscomos PR) — In accordance with the prelaunch preparation schedule, factory control tests of the Nauka module continue in the assembly and test building of site No. 254 of the Baikonur cosmodrome.  Its launch to the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for 2021 using the Proton-M launch vehicle.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

There’s an old saying that I made up just the other day. You can’t always get what you want, but if you test enough times, you get what you need.

Yes, I know. It’s unwieldy. And I expect a copyright infringement letter from the Rolling Stones’ shortly. Forgive me; it’s really hard to come up with a brand new saying that sounds old on short notice.

While we wait for the lawyers to weigh in, let’s talk about what happened over the weekend.