Space News 5 June 2025 - 22 June 2025

On September 19, 1988, Ofek-1 became Israel’s first indigenous satellite, making Israel the eighth nation to orbit its own spacecraft. The Israel Space Agency (ISA) was established in 1983 under physicist Yuval Ne’eman to oversee Israel’s civilian space activities. The Shavit launch vehicle is a 20-meter-tall, three-stage solid-fuel rocket that can loft about 380 kg to a low Earth orbit when launching westward from Palmachim. The VENμS environmental satellite, launched in 2017 and operated through 2023, is a ~265 kg microsatellite built by Israel Aerospace Industries with France’s CNES to monitor vegetation and environmental parameters. AMOS-1, Israel’s first commercial telecom

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) was established in 1993 as China’s civil space authority. By the end of 2024, China operated more than 1,060 active satellites in orbit, a count that has grown more than six-fold since 2015. Chang’e-4 achieved the first landing on the Moon’s far side in 2019. Micius (Mozi), launched in 2016, became the world’s first quantum communications satellite enabling space-based quantum key distribution. BeiDou reached full global coverage with the final BDS-3 satellite launched in June 2020. The Guowang LEO megaconstellation targets about 13,000 satellites, with three batches launched by April 2025 and an initial

The Black Knight legend links Nikola Tesla’s 1899 reports of periodic radio signals from Colorado Springs to the idea of an ancient satellite in Earth orbit. In 1927 Jørgen Hals observed long-delayed echoes, and in 1973 Duncan Lunan claimed a star map pointing to Epsilon Boötes suggesting a 13,000-year-old alien probe, later retracting parts of the interpretation. In 1954 Donald Keyhoe asserted the Air Force had detected two unknown satellites, a claim with little evidence and likely a publicity stunt. In February 1960 the U.S. military detected an unidentified dark object in polar orbit, later identified as Discoverer 8 debris