Satellite News

A recently completed, comprehensive outside review, the first of ESA’s science programme in fifteen years, has made some surprising, insistent proposals on how to get the programme’s budget back on track, according to the France in Space newsletter.

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2007.

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a US$6 million contract to develop and integrate a demonstration payload that will temporarily transmit a third civil signal on a modernised Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M) satellite.

The next DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) satellite F-18, scheduled for launch in April 2008, has successfully passed a significant milestone this month when it completed a 10-day system level thermal vacuum test.

The two U.S: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Orbital Express spacecraft, launched on 8 March in a mated configuration, yesterday successfully separated for the first time.