Satellite News

GeoEye, Inc. said it has secured approximately US$270 million of launch and first-year on-orbit insurance for its next-generation GeoEye-1 satellite.

Spanish satellite ground segment software company GMV said it launched SmartRings 2.0, the latest version of its telecommunications satellite payload reconfiguration tool, SmartRings.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has successfully completed two significant milestones for the Kepler Mission: the precision coating process of Kepler’s primary mirror, and the integration of the detector array assembly.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is still scheduled for launch on 27 September, at the opening of a window that extends from 1120 to 1149 UTC, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Delta II Heavy.

The Russian Progress M-60 cargo spacecraft ended its five-day research mission that began after undocking from the ISS, and re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean earlier today.

The reentry capsule for the Foton-M3 spacecraft, which has been in low-Earth orbit for the last 12 days, successfully landed in an uninhabited area 150 km south of the town of Kustanay in Kazakhstan, close to the Russian border, today at 0758 UTC.

Arianespace plans to market the Indian PSLV and GSLV launchers, the company’s chief executive officer Jean-Yves Le Gall was quoted as saying by AFP.