July 12, 2015

ULA Atlas to Resume Florida Launch Manifest (Source: Florida Today)
The Space Coast is set to resume rocket launches this week with a planned 11:36 a.m. Wednesday liftoff of an Atlas V rocket carrying the Air Force’s next Global Positioning System satellite. The launch is the first of two United Launch Alliance plans within a week, with the company’s Delta IV rocket targeting an 8:07 p.m. July 22 liftoff with a military communications satellite. (7/11)

Space Club Offers Exploration Update (Source: Florida Today)
NASA will provide an update on its human exploration program at Tuesday’s luncheon presentation to the National Space Club Florida Committee in Cape Canaveral. Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, will discuss “Human Exploration — Pioneering the Solar System.” The event begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Radisson at the Port. Register online at www.nscfl.org. (7/12)

When Good Rockets Go Bad (Source: RocketSTEM)
Space flight is dangerous and not just for the astronauts. Over the hundred plus years of rocket technology and space flight growth, many have died just working on rockets or even testing them, from engineers to flight pad crew to even spectators. Progress comes with a price and with that, measures have been taken and improved over the years to try and prevent such events from happening again. Click here. (7/10)

Russia, Brazil to Track Space Junk With GLONASS (Source: Space Daily)
Russia and Brazil are considering a joint project that will detect and track space junk orbiting the Earth, Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday at a meeting with his Brazilian counterpart at the sidelines of the BRICS summit. He thanked Dilma Rousseff for agreeing to host two ground stations servicing Russia's GLONASS navigation service, a GPS-like navigation system of almost 30 satellites. (7/10)

Gigantic, Early Black Hole Could Upend Evolutionary Theory (Source: Keck Observatory)
An international team of astrophysicists led by Benny Trakhtenbrot, a researcher at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Astronomy, discovered a gigantic black hole in an otherwise normal galaxy, using W. M. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter, Keck I telescope in Hawaii. The team, conducting a fairly routine hunt for ancient, massive black holes, was surprised to find one with a mass of more than 7 billion times our Sun making it among the most massive black holes ever discovered. (7/9)

SLS Program Manager Talks Block 1B and Beyond (Source: SpaceFlight Insider)
NASA’s Space Launch System is poised to carry out its first mission – as early as 2018. To find out more about the various versions of this new super heavy-lift booster, SpaceFlight Insider sat down with NASA’s Space Launch System Program Manager Todd May. May had a lot to say about the booster, about the various types and destinations for the massive new rocket. Click here. (7/11)

Avanti Claims Headstart in Bringing Africa Online (Source: The Telegraph)
Avanti Communications has already made it into orbit in its mission to improve global internet coverage, the company's chief executive tells Sophie Curtis. The second great space race is underway. This time, rather than putting a man on the moon, the aim is to make internet access available to the two-thirds of the world that are not yet connected.

The primary target is Africa, a continent with a land mass the size of the USA, China, India and Europe put together, but with a population of 1.1bn less than India alone. The dispersed population means that traditional methods of internet delivery, such as laying fibre cables in the ground, are often expensive and impractical. (7/11)

China-UK Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation Launched (Source: Xinhua)
Three one-meter resolution optical Earth observation satellites were successfully launched early Saturday, according to operator Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd. (21AT). The satellites, which will form the DMC3/TripleSat Constellation, were launched from a site in India as part of a Sino-UK cooperation project. The satellites were developed by UK-headquartered Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), which is the world's leading small satellite company and part of the Airbus Group. (7/11)

Russia's GLONASS Proves More Than a Match for America's GPS (Source: Sputnik)
Russia’s space-based GLONASS navigation system outmatches its US analogue GPS in a number of parameters: it works better at northern latitudes, and it covers the planet with a fewer number of satellites: 24, as opposed to the 31 used by the US, according to the head of the Titov Main Test and Space Systems Control Center. (7/11)