Satellite News

The Khrunichev/ESA/Russian Space Forces/Eurockot launch team preparing a Rokot launcher to its 2 November launch with ESA’s SMOS and Proba-2 spacecraft has successfully completed the spacecraft and rocket elements standalone checkouts.

Two months after the successful launch of the GOES-O spacecraft, now called GOES-14 in orbit, the NASA team removed the GOES-P spacecraft from storage and commenced its post storage testing.

The award of the Galileo satellite contracts by the EU Commission is still planned to take place by the end of 2009. However, the agency will not initially order the full batch of up to 30 satellites.

During the first quarter of the 2010 financial year, NewSat Limited made several announcements documenting new contracts won and the performance by the sales team against the quarterly quota, the Australian company said.

O3b Networks, the developer of a new satellite-based, global Internet backbone for telecommunications operators and Internet Service Providers, announced it will be closing out the third quarter of 2009 with approximately US$600 million in contracts for services and a customer base for each product in its portfolio.

Lockheed Martin said it has demonstrated the interface compatibility of the first Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite’s dual legacy and next-generation Ultra High Frequency (UHF) communications payloads with ground user test terminals.