Satellite News

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. announced that the Alliance Spacesystems acquisition has closed. The acquisition is expected to be slightly accretive to MDA’s earnings in 2008.

GeoEye has secured insurance in the amount of US$20 million on its Ikonos satellite for 2008 with terms comparable to those it had for 2007, the company said.

Boeing said it successfully completed the third demonstration of its next generation processor/router (NGPR) technologies for the Transformational Satellite Communications System Space Segment (TSAT SS).

SpaceDev, Inc.has completed development of its next generation release device, the Low Shock Release Mechanism (LSRM).

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), a suite of four telescopes for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), has been delivered to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in preparation for a launch of SDO no earlier than December 2008.

The fifth in a series of eight modernised Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M) satellites built by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Air Force is ready for launch aboard a Delta II rocket on 20 December from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The stop manoeuvre for GOES-12 was performed this morning, which means that the satellite is back at its operational geosynchronous position of 75 degrees West.

Reports of a two-week outage of India’s latest telecommunication satellite, INSAT 4CR, are “totally false and baseless” according to an ISRO spokesman.