Satellite News

AsiaSat recently announced that the Arabsat/ASBU Bouquet and RTB International, Brunei, havestarted broadcasting on AsiaSat 2, joining other Middle Eastern programming for free to air distribution to serve the Arab community in Asia and Australasia.

Eutelsat Communications reported financial results for the fiscal year 2005-2006.

The U.S. Air Force will withhold 2006 programme award fees from Boeing after cost overruns and production delays on the GPS IIF programme, the Wall Street Journal reported.

ESA’s Venus Express las month suffered a glitch that put the spacecraft temporarily into safe mode, according to the latest status report.

Last week, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA’s New Horizons Pluto probe opened its protective cover and took its first image in space, of Messier 7, a star cluster in our Milky Way galaxy.

Inmarsat said it had agreed with Asian hand-held voice satellite services operator ACeS International Ltd. to offer hand-held satellite phone services and would launch its third, already built Inmarsat-4 satellite in late 2007.

ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft impacted the Moon’s surface as planned on 3 September 2006, 0542 UTC, ending ESA’s first solar-powered mission to another celestial body and Europe’s first mission to the Moon.

Marshall Byrd has been appointed vice president and general manager of Lockheed Commercial Space Systems, effective September 1. He succeeds Ted Gavrilis, who is retiring after 36 years at Lockheed Martin.