Satellite News

ITT’s Space Systems Division has been awarded seven NASA strategic missions concept studies. The space agency periodically conducts these studies to determine future astrophysics missions and technology-development funding.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) deployed the multi-beam antennas of the Kizuna (WINDS) satellite on 1 March (Japan Standard Time) by sending commands from Okinawa station.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) announced its newly revised mission manifest listing twelve flights of its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles.

The Ariane 5 launch campaign for Star One C2 will not start shortly, as claimed in a previous article, but has already begun.

Arianespace and the European Space Agency said that the launch of Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle, is delayed 24 hours owing to a technical concern about the ATV/Ariane 5 launcher separation system.

XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio announced that the companies have agreed not to exercise their rights to terminate the merger agreement until 1 May 2008.

The Earth imaging satellite Landsat 5 is once again collecting and downlinking land-image data. The satellite was temporarily taken out of service in October 2007 following a cell failure within one of the satellite’s two operating on-board batteries.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded funding to four contractor teams for the first phase of the Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange (System F6) space technology and demonstration programme.