Satellite Launches and Deployment It has been an exceptionally busy period for orbital launches around the globe. Japan’s H-2A rocket flew its 50th and final mission, drawing the curtain on a 24-year career. The liquid-fueled H-2A, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and JAXA, successfully lofted an Earth-observation satellit into a sun-synchronous orbit on June 28…
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From Ghost Signals to Orbital Shields In June 2024, Australian astronomers detected a mysterious, intense burst of radio waves originating from near Earth. Initially, they thought they’d found a new pulsar or quasar. Instead, they traced the 30-nanosecond pulse to an unlikely source – NASA’s defunct Relay-2 satellite, launched during the Cold War and dormant…
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Farewell to H-2A: A Final Flight and a New Beginning Japan’s workhorse H-2A rocket concluded nearly 25 years of service with its 50th and final launch on June 28, 2025, carrying the GOSAT-GW climate-monitoring satellite into orbit space.com space.com. Debuting in 2001, the H-2A achieved a 98% success rate (49 successes in 50 missions) –…
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ForgeStar-1 is a groundbreaking in-space manufacturing satellite developed by Welsh startup Space Forge – a project aimed at creating the world’s first orbital semiconductor foundry. Launched in June 2025, ForgeStar-1 became the UK’s first in-space manufacturing mission, designed to produce advanced semiconductor materials in the microgravity environment of Low Earth Orbit spaceforge.com. Built entirely in…
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The U.S. Space Force has tapped SpaceX for a $81.6 million National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 task order to loft the Weather System Follow-on–Microwave 2 (WSF-M2) satellite and a rideshare stack of small DoD spacecraft (the BLAZE-2 mission) in the first half of fiscal 2027. The award—designated mission USSF-178—marks SpaceX’s third…
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Space News Digest: June 2025 An In-Depth Analysis of the Latest Breakthroughs, Launches, and Discoveries in the Global Space Sector Table of Contents 1. Space Coast Launches: Breaking Records and Shaping the Future 2. Satellite Mega-Constellations: Starlink, Kuiper, and the New Race for Orbit 3. Japan’s H-2A Rocket Retires: A New Era with H3 4.…
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Space News Digest: June 2025 A Comprehensive Review of the Week’s Most Significant Space Developments Table of Contents 1. Launches & Satellite Networks – Rocket Lab’s Rapid Cadence and Secret Payloads – Amazon’s Project Kuiper vs. SpaceX Starlink – Japan’s Final H-2A Rocket and GOSAT-GW – South Korea’s 425 Project and Greece’s DUTHSat-2 – Europe’s…
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Overview: A New Milestone for Plan-S and Satellite IoT Plan-S, a Turkish satellite technology firm founded in 2021, has reached a major milestone in industrial IoT connectivity. The company launched four new satellites in June 2025 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 (Transporter-14) mission, expanding its Connecta IoT Network to a total of 17 satellites in…
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Overview: Xona Space Systems and the Pulsar Constellation Project Xona Space Systems is a Silicon Valley startup aiming to build a next-generation satellite navigation network as an alternative and complement to GPS. Founded in 2019 by a team of Stanford-educated engineers (including alumni of SpaceX and Stanford’s GPS Lab), Xona’s mission is to “rebuild satellite…
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A Partnership to Eliminate Dead Zones In August 2022, T-Mobile and SpaceX announced an ambitious partnership called “Coverage Above and Beyond,” aiming to end mobile dead zones by connecting standard smartphones to SpaceX’s Starlink satellitest-mobile.comt-mobile.com. Under this vision, Starlink’s low-Earth-orbit satellites would broadcast using T-Mobile’s cellular spectrum, essentially acting as space-based cell towers. The goal:…
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Axiom-4 mission astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s stay at the International Space Station is extended, with undocking now set for July 14, 2025, per NASA. Shukla, the first Indian at the ISS in 40 years, conducted scientific experiments and joint ISRO-NASA research during the mission. "We are watching the Axiom-4 mission carefully," said NASA's Steve Stich.
The AI² column highlights key AI news: Homo Digitalis launches a digital rights declaration for the AI era, the AI for Good Summit 2025 showcases AI's societal benefits, and the EU prepares a new code for general-purpose AI. These developments emphasize digital rights, AI ethics, and global cooperation in AI governance.
NASA has released unprecedented images from its Parker Solar Probe’s closest approach to the Sun, just 6.2 million km away. The detailed photos reveal massive coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and the Sun’s heliospheric current sheet, advancing our understanding of space weather and its effects on Earth’s technology.
Conversational AI and Voice Assistants – Key Developments (June–July 2025)Major Product Launches and Updates Amazon Alexa+ Rollout and Features: Amazon’s generative AI upgrade for Alexa – dubbed Alexa+ – entered broad early access by mid-2025. After a February launch event, Alexa+ was initially available to a limited group and reached over 1 million users by June theve…
EdTech Sector Developments – June & July 2025June and July 2025 have been pivotal months for educational technology (EdTech), marked by major platform launches, global partnerships, and a continued evolution in how digital tools support learning. Across K–12 schools, universities, and corporate training programs, AI-driven learning systems …
