Satellite News

EchoStar Communications Corporation announced that it has appointed Carl Vogel as president, overseeing day-to-day operations for DISH Network, effective immediately. Mr. Vogel will continue to serve as vice chairman of EchoStar’s board of directors.

SES Americom said that more than 30 television programmers and networks representing 120 channels have signed IPTV transport agreements with SES Americom and its IP-PRIME IPTV Television Broadcast Center.

ARTEL, Inc., a provider of Information Technology and Managed Network Services, announced that since January 2006 the company has signed nine previously unannounced contracts valued at approximately US$100 million. The contracts are a combination of exercised options on previous awards and new task orders for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Building a replacement for the Belarusian BelKa satellite will take between two and two-and-a-half years, Mikhail Myasnikovich, chairman of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences (BNAS), was quoted as saying.

The new German radar imaging satellite TerraSAR-X will be launched later this year as part of a project financed by joint funding from both the public and private sectors for the first time, the German Aerospace Agency (DLR) said.

NASA said it is preparing major instrument components for JAXA’s Solar-B spacecraft. The satellite is scheduled for launch aboard the last M-V rocket from the Uchinoura Space Center, Kagoshima, Japan on 22 September 2006 between 2100 and 2200 UTC.

On 14 September 2006 a ceremony took place at the facilities of Snecma Propulsion Solide (SPS) in Bordeaux, France, to mark the occasion of the delivery of the first nozzle for the P80 solid rocket motor. The P80 is the first stage of the Vega small launcher.

Rocket: Soyuz FG; Payload: Soyuz TMA 9; Date: 18 September 2006, 0408 UTC; Launch Site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Soyuz TMA-9 manned transport spacecraft was accurately placed on the target orbit for the Expedition 14 mission to the International Space Station. Space shuttle Atlantis has meanwhile undocked from the station.