WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) finalized an agreement between the United States and Canada to collaborate on the Gateway, an outpost orbiting the Moon that will provide vital support for a sustainable, long-term return of astronauts to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Artemis program. This Gateway agreement further solidifies the broad effort by the United States to engage international partners in sustainable lunar exploration as part of the Artemis program and to demonstrate technologies needed for human missions to Mars.

LONGUEUIL, Quebec, December 16, 2020 – The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, today announced that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and NASA have signed the Gateway Treaty, a historic agreement that confirms Canada’s participation in the next major international collaboration in space exploration, the planned Lunar Gateway space station.

Under the Treaty, a Canadian will be part of the Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to the Moon since 1972. This mission, planned to launch in 2023, positions Canada to make history as the second country to have an astronaut travel to deep space and fly around the Moon. The Treaty also confirms a second flight for a Canadian astronaut to the Lunar Gateway.

U.S.-based smallsat technology delivers unprecedented 50 x 50cm SAR “Spot” imagery to power critical applications for Government, Defense & Intelligence, and Commercial Customers 

SAN FRANCISCO, December 16, 2020 — Today Capella Space released 50cm x 50cm ‘Spot’ imagery, delivering the highest resolution commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery on the market. Prior to Capella, the best resolution on the market was 1m x 25 cm with non-square pixels which created its own challenges.

These previous images were collected with limited bandwidth of 300 MHz where Capella imagery is collected with up to 600 MHz of bandwidth. In the midst of increasing global change, Capella Space is setting the standard for how large organizations extract key insights and make better decisions through Earth observation data. Capella Space’s spot imagery delivers the highest resolution, most usable all-American made SAR imagery data on the market.  

LONG BEACH, Calif. (Rocket Lab PR) — Our team is still on a high from recovering an Electron booster for the first time. This was a monumental milestone and achievement for our recovery plans and sets us on a strong path to make Electron a reusable launch vehicle. Here’s how it all went down, and what’s next for the Rocket Lab reusability program.

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the Government of Brazil Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI) Marcos Pontes signed a joint statement of intent during a virtual meeting on Dec. 14, 2020. The statement describes Brazil’s intention to be the first country in South America to sign the Artemis Accords. Brazil has expressed interest in potentially contributing a robotic lunar rover – in addition to conducting lunar science experiments and other investigations – as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

TOKYO (JAXA PR) — The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on December 15, 2020 that soil collected by Hayabusa2 at the first touchdown on asteroid Ryugu is in chamber A of the sample container.

The CAPSTONE mission will see Rocket Lab extend its reach far beyond Earth orbit for the first time to deploy an in-house designed and built Photon spacecraft to the Moon.

Long Beach, Calif. (Rocket Lab PR) – Rocket Lab has reached a key milestone ahead of the company’s first launch to the Moon, with spacecraft qualification underway for the Photon spacecraft that will transport a NASA satellite into a unique lunar orbit that no other spacecraft has explored before.

Astra has said it successfully launched its Rocket 3.2 booster into space on Tuesday from the Pacific Spaceport Complex — Alaska on Kodiak Island, but that the booster came up just short of reaching orbit.

China’s Chang’e-5 is on its way back to Earth with precious samples of lunar regolith heading for a landing in Inner Mongolia later this week. Chang’e-5’s orbiter and return capsule entered lunar-Earth transfer orbit on Sunday after a 22-minute burn of its engine. The vehicles made a mid-course correction with a 28-second burn on Monday. The return capsule is carrying about 2.2 kg (4.4 lb) of lunar regolith obtained on […]

EVRY, France (Arianespace PR) — Arianespace and Eutelsat have confirmed that EUTELSAT 10B, Eutelsat’s next generation high-throughput telecommunications satellite, will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket.

EUTELSAT 10B is scheduled for launch in 2022 on one of eight Ariane 5 missions remaining to be performed with the heavy-lift launcher.

• The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded ArianeGroup the contract for the initial development phase of the Themis reusable rocket stage demonstrator
• This first contract, worth 33 million euros, was awarded to ArianeGroup following preparatory work done by ArianeWorks, the innovation accelerator platform created by the French space agency CNES and ArianeGroup
• Themis, powered by the Prometheus engine, will enable Europe to develop technologies for future low-cost reusable launchers

PARIS (ArianeGroup PR) — ArianeGroup has received a 33-million-euro contract from the European Space Agency (ESA), to begin the first development phase for the Themis reusable rocket stage demonstrator. Themis will use Prometheus, the very low-cost rocket engine demonstrator currently under development as an ESA programme.

MAHIA PENINSULA, New Zealand (Rocket Lab PR) — Rocket Lab, the leading dedicated small launch provider and space systems company, has successfully launched its 17th Electron mission, deploying the first spacecraft to orbit for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data and solutions provider Synspective.