Satellite News

Rocket: Soyuz-FG; Payload: Soyuz-MS 02; Date: 19 October 2016, 0805 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The crewed transportation spacecraft was successfully put into low Earth orbit and is headed for the International Space Station (ISS).

The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) of ESA’s ExoMars 2016 has successfully performed the long 139-minute burn required to be captured by Mars and entered an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet, while contact has not yet been confirmed with the mission’s test lander from the surface.

Thales Alenia Space has opened a facility in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that will expand Europe’s capability with satellites that rely wholly on electric propulsion.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered safe mode on 19 October at about 0547 UTC. Early indications are a software performance monitor induced a reboot of the spacecraft’s onboard computer.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has completed delivery of the first set of hardware for Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner service module propulsion system.