Satellite News

The recently launched U.S. military communications satellite MUOS 5 has experienced an anomaly during its transfer to geosynchronous orbit and is currently stuck in an intermediate orbit.

EUMETSAT and CNES have signed an agreement on ARGOS receivers to fly on METOP-SG satellites.

Specialists from RSC Energia (a part of State Corporation Roskosmos) working at the Baikonur launch site have successfully completed operations to mate a manned transportation spacecraft of the new series Soyuz MS to the adapter section.

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together to provide affordable opportunities for United Nations Member States to conduct experiments in space.

A booster for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up Tuesday for its second qualification ground test at Orbital ATK’s test facilities in Promontory, Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS’s first uncrewed test flight with NASA’s Orion spacecraft in late 2018.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems has been awarded a US$25.2 million U.S. Air Force contract modification for work on the Remote Sensing Systems Directorate’s Space Based Infra-Red Systems programme.

NASA is contractually extending science operations for its Hubble Space Telescope an additional five years. The agency awarded a sole source contract extension to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy for continued Hubble science operations support at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Following testing in France and Germany, a new type of dispenser designed to carry four navigation satellites into orbit at once is now in French Guiana, in place for Galileo’s first Ariane 5 launch later this year.