North Korea
2014 – Spaceports Overview
Space launch vehicles and their payloads are prepared and subsequently launched or deployed from facilities called spaceports. The scale of spaceports varies widely, whether measuring the area they cover or…
Satellites Reveal Regions Closed to Outsiders
Possible atrocities once only seen by government agencies are now in the public view. [caption id="attachment_3564" align="alignright"]Commercially available images can provide insight beyond closed borders. This image shows a North…
Space Products and Services – TSR 2016
Space Products and Services - TSR 2016 explores some of the ways in which space products and services have enriched the lives and businesses of everyday people, using Earth observation…
2013 – Military Reconnaissance
Military-specific observation satellites can be used for reconnaissance or other intelligence-gathering purposes. The capabilities of remote sensing satellites can sometimes obscure whether or not they are being used for civilian…
2013 – Spaceports Overview
Spaceports are the facilities where launch vehicles and their payloads are prepared and subsequently launched. Spaceports vary widely in scale. They range from the relatively austere Kodiak Launch Complex in…
Satellite Imagery Analysis Ready For Business
Imagery intelligence is becoming more available to the public, as services such as Allsource Analysis gained attention in the news. In October 2014, the Longmont, Colorado, company wrote a comprehensive…
Woodchoppers Fall: Catching North Korean Illegal Logging Operations
In May 2010, a researcher at Purdue University used a combination of NASA satellite imagery and information from Google Earth to determine that North Korea was conducting illegal logging operations…
2013 – Other Countries, Launch, Payload
South Korea conducted ## successful orbital launch in 2013. After suffering two previous launch failures of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV)-1, arguments arose between the Russian manufacturers of the…
2012 – Other Countries, Launch, Payload
In 2012, several smaller countries and organizations demonstrated their ability, or at least ambitions, to conduct an orbital space launch. The privately held Sea Launch company, which focuses on deploying…
2013 – Orbital Launch Reports and Forecasts
2013 was a fairly typical year for the global orbital launch industry, with ## launch attempts—slightly higher than the 2009–2013 average of ##. Of the ## orbital launch attempts in…