Satellite News

Iridium Satellite announced a new network quality guarantee programme for customers that promises credits of up to 100 minutes of airtime, as well as three months free subscription fees, if the Iridium network fails to complete properly initiated voice calls from customers’ new Iridium handsets.

Paksat International has leased out the bulk of transponders aboard Paksat 1 to a British network, company officials said.

Recent remarks of Thailand’s Council for National Security chairman, Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, have been met with irritation. The general, who led last year’s military coup, had described the Thaicom telecom satellites as “national assets” that should revert back to Thai control from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

Scientists from the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (ATC) are using data from the Toroidal Imaging Mass Angle Spectrograph (TIMAS)–an ATC instrument launched on the NASA Polar spacecraft in 1996–to determine how and where the energy from the solar wind is transferred into the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Boeing’s satellite unit is facing two new lawsuits collectively seeking US$610 million in damages for alleged satellite malfunctions. Boeing said the claims in both lawsuits were without merit.

Rocket: Delta 2 (7925); Payload: THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms); Date: 17 February 2007, 2301 UTC; Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The five THEMIS probes separated from the rocket about 74 minutes after lift-off.