Satellite News

The Launch Readiness Review (RAL), organised by Arianespace at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, last night gave the go-ahead for today’s transfer of Ariane 5 out to the launch pad.

At a congressional hearing, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said that “not too far from now we will have used the last kilogram of Plutonium-238, and if we want more Plutonium-238, we’ll have to buy it from Russia.” This has been known for years, but nonetheless Dr. Griffin’s remarks were widely reported and commented by news media.

Inmarsat plc reported unaudited consolidated financial results for the year ending 31 December 2007.

The Odyssey Launch Platform and the Sea Launch Commander have departed Sea Launch Home Port for the equatorial Pacific, in preparation for the launch of the DirecTV 11 broadcast satellite, planned for 17 March.

The Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group (SUIRG) has released the formal findings of a field test on the compatibility of Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) and WiMAX services sharing the C-band spectrum. The test conclusively demonstrated that WiMax communications pose a significant interference threat to satellite signals transmitted in the C-band frequency, the non-profit group said.

COM DEV International Ltd. said it has successfully completed the airborne validation trials of its advanced Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver solution.

China will launch its first next-generation polar orbiting weather satellite in May, Xinhua news agency reported.

NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, has arrived at the Astrotech payload processing facility near the Kennedy Space Center to begin final preparations for launch.