Satellite News

China is aiming to replace all its imported communications and broadcast satellites with improved home-made ones by 2010.

ESA’s Science Programme Committee has unanimously approved to continue the operations of the Ulysses spacecraft until March 2009. This latest extension, for a period of 12 months, is the fourth in the history of the joint NASA/ESA mission.

The launch of Thuraya 3 has been postponed again because of bad weather.

The launch of Thuraya 3 aboard a Zenit 3 SL continues to be delayed by bad weather at the equatorial launch site in the Pacific Ocean.

Rocket: Proton M/Briz M; Payload: Sirius 4; Date: 17 November, 2239 UTC; Site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. After a 9-hour-13-minute mission, the launcher released the satellite into geostationary transfer orbit.

At the conclusion of the 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), major satellite operators said that their campaign to protect the C-band from interference from mobile communications services had been successful.

Iridium Satellite LLC announced financial results for the third quarter of 2007.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recently carried out an observation using two onboard sensors of the Moon Explorer Kaguya (SELENE,) the Terrain Camera (TC) and Multi-band Imager (MI), processed the acquired data, and confirmed they were functioning properly.