Satellite News

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. reported financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and full year ending 31 December 2006.

Boeing plans to install advanced anti-jamming technology on some future commercial satellites, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Solar Orbiter and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) have experienced cost overruns that have led ESA to “shuffle” the missions and look for partnerships, the agency said in a heavily sugar-coated statement.

Astrium is set to build the Mercury probe BepiColombo on behalf of the European Space Agency, ESA. ESA’s scientific programme decision-making body, the Science Programme Committee (SPC), agreed to award this order to Astrium following the decision of ESA’s Industrial Policy Committee in January this year.

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft executed a close flyby of Mars on 25 February, a key milestone in the 7.1-thousand-million km journey to its target comet.

NASA has selected Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International Inc.to design, develop, fabricate, test and deliver engineering models of a turbine pump assembly for the Ares I upper stage thrust vector control subsystem.

The construction site of the Soyuz launch base in French Guiana was officially opened on 26 February by Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, Yannick d’Escatha, President of CNES, Jean-Yves Le Gall, Director General of Arianespace, and Anatoly Perminov, Head of Roskosmos.