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ARQUIMEA and Aerospacelab have announced the signature of a collaboration agreement at the 37th edition of the Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University. The new co-developed satellite will highlight optimized reliability and power management. Furthermore, it will deliver 1.5 kW of peak power and will be able to integrate payloads of 40 kg (~90 pounds). The satellite performance will also meet the demand for LEO missions, such as telecommunications constellations, synthetic aperture radar, Earth observation, and other applications requiring high reliability and onboard satellite processing capabilities.

EnduroSat and Vyoma have announced that they will be working together on Europe’s first commercial mission for in-situ space situational awareness (SSA). As a result, Vyoma will use in-orbit optical telescopes to observe space objects and map the orbital environment at a high frequency, thus providing SSA data and services with near-zero latency. On the other hand, EnduroSat will design and build the ESPA microsatellites, which will deploy in a low-Earth orbit.

Starfish Space announced on the 8th of August that it has been awarded $1.8 million by AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, to support continued development of the Cephalopod software for satellite guidance, navigation, and control. 

Summer is upon us, and as our gaze shifts towards the stars during those warm, clear nights, SpaceWatch.Global brings you its second collection or the Summer Listening Series. Based on the vote by our newsroom, we have mapped out an interstellar journey across five categories. This week we are starting with “Climate, Space and Earth.”

Blindness due to retina diseases affects over 200 million people globally, and that number is expected to reach 290 million by 2040. The two most common retina degenerative diseases are called Retinitis Pigmentosa and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). Retinitis Pigmentosa affects one and a half million people globally. It starts with peripheral vision that goes dark, until the person is completely blind. AMD affects in the US alone 30 million people over 55, including 10 million in the blinding stage. AMD starts with central vision that goes dark, until the person is totally blind.

Muon Space and Exolaunch have signed a multi-launch agreement (MLA) to deploy Muon Space’s first three constellation satellites during SpaceX Transporter missions. Muon Space’s first satellite, MuSat-1, launched in June via Exolaunch on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Charlie Ergen is consolidating his telecommunications empire, merging Dish Network and EchoStar, his satellite and broadband services in an all-stock deal, reports CNBC. The deal is reuniting two businesses that have been separate for about 15 years, after Ergen took EchoStar out of Dish Network in 2008. Echostar was founded in 1980, selling satellite dishes before launching its subscription satellite service in 1995. 

RIKEN, Japan’s largest research institution, Mitsui Bussan Aerospace, and Kongsberg NanoAvionics announced on the 7th of August their collaboration on the NinjaSat1 X-ray observation mission. The aim of this two-year mission in low Earth orbit (LEO) is to observe X-ray photons from bright X-ray objects in the universe. The NinjaSat team intends to observe black holes and neutron stars that brighten suddenly in X-rays and coordinate with on-ground optical observatories to study how matter accretes to these compact objects. 

DCUBED, the German NewSpace hardware manufacturer, has announced that it will demonstrate in-space manufacturing as part of a demonstration mission in Q1 2024. This demonstration will represent the first time any product would undergo manufacture in free space. The demonstration will consequently see the production of a roughly 30-centimeter high, 3D-printed truss structure. Furthermore, it intends to prove the efficacy of in-space manufacturing and highlight the game-changing potential that such capabilities promise to deliver for production in orbit. 

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has announced it has signed a new launch services agreement with a confidential customer for a HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) mission. The mission will consequently launch from Complex 2 at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in 2024. The contract signing with the new customer came just days after Rocket Lab successfully launched the first HASTE mission on 17 June 2023 for Leidos under the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program.