Satellite News

Russia’s Energomash scientific and production company has concluded a contract to deliver RD-181 rocket engines to Orbital Sciences. The engines will be used for the first stage of Antares rockets beginning 2015.

During its next flight, SpaceX will attempt the precision landing of a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time, on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship. While SpaceX has already demonstrated two successful soft water landings, executing a precision landing on an unanchored ocean platform is significantly more challenging.

The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument that will fly on the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 spacecraft (JPSS-1), NOAA’s next polar orbiting environmental satellite, has been successfully integrated with the spacecraft.

Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin successfully completed the fourth of five planned launch and early orbit exercises to demonstrate new automation capabilities, information assurance and launch readiness of the U.S. Air Force’s next generation GPS III satellite and Operational Control System (OCX).

Galileo’s fifth satellite – recently salvaged from the wrong orbit to begin navigation testing – has been combined with three predecessors to provide its very first position fix.