Satellite News

Alliant Techsystems said recently conducted a successful full-scale severance test of an Ares I-X first stage. The test is a milestone in the development of NASA’s Ares I crew launch vehicle and is another step leading to the flight test of Ares I-X in Spring 2009.

A Falun-Gong-backed TV channel has complained that “millions of households in China are no longer receiving” its satellite broadcast one week after a failure on Eutelsat’s W5 satellite.

Boeing announced the on-orbit handover of the Thuraya-3 Geo-Mobile satellite, which will extend Thuraya’s coverage to 170 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.

CNES has processed the first Operational Data Record (OGDR) product from Jason-2 only 48 hours after its launch by NASA from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Delta II. These first products are uncalibrated and are purely for testing purposes.

COM DEV International Ltd. has been awarded an C$8.6 million (EUR5.5 million, US$8.5 million) contract to design, build and launch a micro-satellite for the Government of Canada.

NASA has selected two science proposals to be the agency’s next Explorer Program Mission of Opportunity investigations.

A joint U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin team announced that it has successfully completed on-orbit checkout of the second Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO-2) payload in the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) constellation.

NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, is safely up-and-running well in orbit approximately 565 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the agency said.