Satellite News

NASA recently selected a University of Central Florida project that will measure the temperature and make-up of the Earth’s outer atmosphere as one of two missions of opportunity under its Explorer science space programme.

SES Astra has awarded the construction of a new satellite, Astra 1N, to EADS Astrium.

ISE (Integral Systems Europe) announced the delivery and installation of a fully integrated CSM (Carrier Signal Monitoring) and transponder planning system for the Thor family of satellites at Telenor Satellite Broadcasting AS facilities in Nittedal, Norway.

Russia is to launch the long-delayed THEOS (Thailand Earth Observation System) satellite on 16 July (likely Moscow time), Interfax reports.

The Sea Launch team arrived at the launch site in the Equatorial Pacific over the weekend and initiated a 72-hour countdown, in preparation for the launch of the EchoStar XI satellite on 16 July UTC.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite — which began its mission in April — is now providing atmospheric scintillation forecast data.

Eutelsat has declared four transponders aboard its W5 satellite permanently lost while the organisation Reporters Without Borders claimed the technical problems with the spacecraft were a welcome opportunity to get rid of controversial Chinese-language broadcaster NTDTV.

WildBlue Communications, Inc. said it completed of a series of hardware and software system upgrades that increased its total network capacity by more than 150,000 additional customers since the beginning of 2008.