News

Astroscale Japan Inc. has announced that its commercial debris inspection demonstration satellite, Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J), has achieved a major technical milestone: completion of the rendezvous phase of its mission and the beginning of the proximity approach. This success is underscored by starting Angles-Only Navigation, a navigation method to estimate relative position and velocity through the servicer’s onboard cameras.

We made it back to the Denver Office of Astroscale US to meet with the team and to record this interview of Dr Emma Gatti with Ron Lopez, President of Astroscale US. Astroscale has exciting updates about its expansion in the United States, with offices in Denver and Washington D.C., and changes in its board structure. They are collaborating with the government on many more contracts and are looking forward to many more commercial space opportunities.

Last week, a major merger took place in the space field. Euroconsult and SpaceTec merged to form one space consulting company: Novaspace (Merger of Euroconsult & SpaceTec Partners). Torsten Kriening spoke with Pacome Revillon and Rainer Horn about the merger and the future of the newly formed company - Novaspace.

Big focus on the defense sector, says Adam Biskner, President of Space Systems at Redwire Space. In lieu of budget cuts and changing market trends, Defence products will be at the forefront of Redwire Space's products. There was a quick highlight about : SabreSat, more information can be found here: 

Prof Nicolas Peter, International Space University, spoke with Dr Emma Gatti during the Space Symposium 2024. They discussed their long-standing relationship with North America and their upcoming Space Studies Program 2024 in collaboration with @RiceUniversity and NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). He also discussed training the next generation of space professionals and the widely discussed topic of talent recruitment for the space industry.

At the Space Symposium, Dr Emma Gatti met with SpaceWatch.Global friend and collaborator Dr Luigi Scatteia, who spoke to us about PwC 's commercial interest and clients in space and how the Space Symposium is fostering that. With a diverse roster of clients across various sectors - defense companies, space agencies, institutions, governments, private companies, startups, etc., the PwC is aiming to expand and cater to the entire space environment.

Avi Shabtai, CEO of Ramon.Space, spoke with Torsten Kriening this morning at the Space Symposium about building space-resilient computing infrastructure to serve the next generation of satellites and spacecraft that deal with space data. Avi Shabtai elicited three functions for space data: store, Process, and Move. These are a major part of the space systems services that Ramon.Space strives to provide.

The Director General of the German Space Agency at the DLR, Dr Walther Pelzer, spoke to us during the Space Symposium 2024. He highlighted how the Symposium is a platform to showcase the commercialization of space. He also spoke about how there is a push for a 'Business to Business' partnership shift happening and why networking with the industry is crucial to fostering this.

Tuana Yazici spoke with Torsten Kriening about her Non- profit AeroAI Voyages which strives to design implementable projects that builds solutions for humanity using space technology and artificial intelligence. She spoke about their current project - AeroAI Guardian , which using optical imagery , radar data to monitor wildlife hotspots.

HEO has finalized a deal with Sidus Space, which will see Sidus Space host HEO’s NEI imager, HOLMES-006, onboard LizzieSat-3 as part of the Bandwagon-2 launch, along with a monthly data services contract. This consequently marks the second agreement between HEO and Sidus Space, as Sidus Space’s LizzieSat-2 will be hosting HEO’s HOLMES-004 on the same launch.