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"A robotic spacecraft built in nine months by Arizona-based startup Katalyst Space Technologies is set to launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on a first-of-its-kind mission to grab NASA's sinking Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and push it back to a safe orbit — the first time any commercial vehicle has attempted to capture an operational government satellite that was never designed to be serviced. "

In this week's Avid Space industry update, Blue Origin continues the cleanup effort at LC-36, NASA's Office of the Inspector General releases a scathing report on NASA's handling of the Starliner contract with Boeing, and Northrop Grumman's last Pegasus XL rocket is launched to on a mission to rescue the Swift Space Observatory. Starliner Delays Costly - NASA Watchdog Demands Accountability Weekly Spaceflight News | 9:04 Avid Space | 29,051 views | July 8, 2026

Explanation: Sometimes we can all use a little help from a friend. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory needs a boost to stay in orbit after almost 22 years of service. This video shows an artist's visualization of the Swift Boost Mission: The Katalyst's LINK spacecraft was launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3 and it is now en route to rendezvous with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit over the course of the next several months. This type of maneuver has never been attempted before. If successful, it will be the technology demonstration of...

NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. NASA hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions. A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once it takes off from an atoll in the Pacific’s Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday. Scanning...

"It's the only launch vehicle that can meet the orbit, the schedule and the cost to achieve something unprecedented with emerging technology."A history-making robotic rescue mission scheduled to launch next year will fly on a rocket dropped from a plane.In September, NASA announced that it has chosen Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the altitude of its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a space telescope whose orbit has gotten dangerously low since its November 2004 launch...The $500 million Swift observatory was built by Orbital Sciences, a company that in 2014 became Orbital ATK, which was then acquired by Northrop Grumman...

DORAL, Fla. — An armed man was shot and wounded after he shouted about President Trump and opened fire at the Trump National Doral Miami Golf Club in South Florida early Friday, the police said. The authorities did not immediately describe a motive for the attack at about 1:30 a.m. in the marble-floored lobby of the club’s hotel, which is owned by the Trump Organization. They identified the suspect as Jonathan Oddi, 42, and said they believed he had acted alone.

The Pegasus Affair: This is how the right-wing government was overthrown They had a problem. The majority of the people in Israel vote right. The national camp has been in power for too long and they had no democratic way to replace it, so they found a solution Yehuda Vald, 10.02.22 The revelation this week [https://www.srugim.co.il/?p=645212] in the Calcalist newspaper about the activation of spy software against senior officials in the economy, including those close to Prime Minister Netanyahu, is the tip of the iceberg that has been revealed about the anti-democratic revolution led by influential people in the police...

The FBI has obtained Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO Group, which allows the agency to take complete control of a person’s phone without their knowledge. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has demanded answers from the FBI about how often it uses this invasive tool to hack Americans and whether the agency has gotten authorization from the courts to do so.“The American people have a right to know the scale of the FBI’s hacking activities and the rules that govern the use of this controversial surveillance technique,” Wyden said in a letter Tuesday to FBI Director Chris Wray.In particular, Wyden...

In the wake of a close victory for leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over President Jair Bolsonaro in the recent election, tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters have been marching in the streets protesting what they contend was a fraudulent outcome. In a bid to end the protests, Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered the bank accounts of the leaders of these "anti-democratic protesters" frozen. Lula praised the Court for "helping save our democracy. Ultimately, seizing the assets from those who wrongly possess them is fundamental to our program to fully socialize Brazil. By targeting the enemies...

Foreboding Signals Amid Discovery the FBI Can Launch Pegasus Cell Phone Targeting With Appointment of Special CounselNovember 22, 2022 | Sundance | 39 CommentsIf you read the article about the “Pegasus Project”, spyware created to infect cell phones that was marketed by Israeli intelligence through a company called NSO {Go Deep Here}, then you essentially know the background. Pegasus is “no click” targeting spyware that can be deployed against cellular phones, simply by inputting the phone number and transmitting to it.The Guardian previously reported,“Claudio Guarnieri, who runs Amnesty International’s Security Lab, said once a phone was infected with Pegasus, a...

Israel used the NSO Group’s software as a tool of diplomacy. The F.B.I. wanted it for domestic surveillance. Then everything soured. Here are highlights of a New York Times Magazine investigation. It is widely regarded as the world’s most potent spyware, capable of reliably cracking the encrypted communications of iPhone and Android smartphones. The software, Pegasus, made by an Israeli company, NSO Group, has been able to track terrorists and drug cartels. It has also been used against human rights activists, journalists and dissidents. Now, an investigation published Friday by The New York Times Magazine has found that Israel, which...

In a statement to the Guardian, the Us intelligence agency says it bought a license from NSO Group for 'product testing and evaluation only' and not 'operational use' The FBI confirmed on Wednesday that it had purchased Pegasus spyware from Israel's NSO Group, but denied ever using it during an operation. In a statement to the Guardian, the FBI said it purchased the powerful cellphone hacking software in order to "stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft." The US security agency said it bought a "limited license" to use Pegasus for "product testing and evaluation only," and said "there was...

It is widely regarded as the world’s most potent spyware, capable of reliably cracking the encrypted communications of iPhone and Android smartphones. The yearlong investigation, by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, also reports that the FBI bought and tested NSO software for years with plans to use it for domestic surveillance until the agency finally decided last year not to deploy the tools. The Times found that sales of Pegasus played a critical role in securing the support of Arab nations in Israel’s campaign against Iran and negotiating the Abraham Accords, the 2020 diplomatic agreements, signed at a Trump White...

Female journalists and activists say they had their private photos shared on social media by governments seeking to intimidate and silence them. Ghada Oueiss, a Lebanese broadcast journalist at Al-Jazeera, was eating dinner at home with her husband last June when she received a message from a colleague telling her to check Twitter. Oueiss opened up the account and was horrified: A private photo taken when she was wearing a bikini in a jacuzzi was being circulated by a network of accounts, accompanied by false claims that the photos were taken at her boss’s house. Over the next few days...

Activists, journalists and politicians around the world have been spied on using cellphone malware developed by a private Israeli firm, it emerged Sunday, igniting fears of widespread privacy and rights abuses. The use of the software, called Pegasus and developed by Israel's NSO group, was reported on by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and other news outlets who collaborated on an investigation into a data leak. The leak was of a list of up to 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016. One of those targeted was...

Snap Summary: Pegasus: Snowden-Level Spy Tech + 8 Years of "Improvement"

The hitmen came for Cecilio Pineda Birto as he swung in a hammock at a carwash, waiting for his pickup to be cleaned. The 38-year-old freelance reporter was shot dead ... A few hours earlier, Pineda had in a broadcast on Facebook Live accused state police and local politicians of colluding with a violent local capo known as El Tequilero. In previous weeks, Pineda had received a string of anonymous death threats. At about the same time, his mobile phone number was selected as a possible target for surveillance by a Mexican client of the spyware company NSO Group. A...

It is the name for perhaps the most powerful piece of spyware ever developed – certainly by a private company. Once it has wormed its way on to your phone, without you noticing, it can turn it into a 24-hour surveillance device. It can copy messages you send or receive, harvest your photos and record your calls. It might secretly film you through your phone’s camera, or activate the microphone to record your conversations. It can potentially pinpoint where you are, where you’ve been, and who you’ve met. Pegasus is the hacking software – or spyware – that is developed,...

A Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket launched the U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Launch-2 (TacRL-2) mission June 13 at 1:11 a.m. Pacific from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The payload was successfully deployed its intended orbit, a Space Force spokesman confirmed on Sunday. Pegasus is an air-launched rocket deployed from a Stargazer L-1011 aircraft. Shortly after its release from Stargazer, at approximately 40,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, Pegasus ignited its first stage and flew TacRL-2 to a sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit. Launch vehicle assembly, integration and testing were completed within four months of contract award, said Lt. Col. Ryan Rose,...

GRAVITY works by synching the VLT's four unit telescopes to perform like a bigger, more powerful telescope. For the first time, the Very Large Telescope's GRAVITY instrument has observed a distant exoplanet using optical interferometry. Observations of the exoplanet's atmosphere revealed massive, swirling storm clouds of iron and silicates stretching across the entirety of the alien planet. Astronomers described GRAVITY's feat and shared details about the observed target, exoplanet HR8799e, in a paper published this week in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. GRAVITY works by synching the VLT's four unit telescopes to perform like a bigger, more powerful telescope. Astronomers...