NASA announced Thursday that it reached an agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to expand the Earth-observing satellite data sharing agreement the three agencies reached in 2020 to launch a COVID-19 Earth Observing Dashboard. The new collaborative arrangement will now see that data used to document a…

Terran Orbital subsidiary PredaSAR received a prototype contract award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The contract “aims to research synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite formation flying concepts and joint data collection techniques,” Terran Orbital announced Wednesday.  The prototype award is under an Other Transaction Authority (OTA), a flexible Department of Defense (DoD)…

Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace has ordered three microsatellites from NanoAvionics for a space-based maritime surveillance mission. The companies announced the deal May 18, financial terms were not disclosed.   The mission brings together a group of European companies. NanoAvionics, based in Lithuania, will build the satellites based on its MP42 microsatellite bus. Kongsberg is…

Terran Orbital Corporation shipped two next-generation satellites for Earth observation company GeoOptics to Cape Canaveral ahead of launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-5 rideshare mission. The Transporter-5 mission is set for May 25.  The spacecraft are the first phase of GeoOptics's Cicero-2 constellation, designed to monitor the impacts of climate change. These second-generation satellites were developed by…