Satellite News

The U.S. administration has approved the purchase of new spy satellites and will buy more commercial imagery from the private sector to plug immediate gaps in satellite coverage.

GOCE’s highly sensitive gradiometer instrument has been switched on and is producing data. Forming the heart of GOCE, the gradiometer is specifically designed to measure Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy.

The first mirror segment that will fly on the James Webb Space Telescope, built by Northrop Grumman Corporation, has completed its first series of cryogenic temperature tests in the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama/USA.

Engineers have successfully ejected the dust cover from NASA’s Kepler telescope.

Following the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders on 8 April in Evry, France, Arianespace announced 2008 sales of EUR955.7 million, with net income of EUR2.5 million.

Satellite export control rules are hampering U.S. national security and economic interests, and must be updated to protect the U.S. space industrial base, Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Marion Blakey said recently.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. has signed a strategic agreement with RapidEye AG, provider of commercial satellite imagery products and services, to become the exclusive supplier of RapidEye satellite ground stations based on MDA direct downlink solutions, to the global surveillance and reconnaissance market.

Eutelsat Communications announced the upcoming launch of France’s free Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) channels via its Atlantic Bird 3 satellite. The new offer, called FRANSAT , will be available from June.