Satellite News

The U.S. National Space Society said that a “first-of-a-kind” long-range demonstration of solar-powered wireless power transmission was successfully conducted last May.

SES New Skies has been contracted by Mediascape, Inc. to provide transponder capacity on the NSS-11 satellite for their new direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television service targeting the Philippines.

Serbian cable and satellite operator SBB has inked a new contract with Eutelsat Communications for a fourth transponder on Eutelsat’s W2 satellite.

Telesat has signed a contract with NewWave Broadband Ltd to provide the equivalent of three transponders on Telesat’s soon-to-be launched Telstar 11N satellite.

ISE (Integral Systems Europe) announced the delivery and installation of a fully integrated CSM (Carrier Signal Monitoring), transponder planning, and Network Management system for the Vinasat 1 satellite.

Objectivity announced that its flagship product, Objectivity/DB, is being used in the Space Situational Awareness Foundational Enterprise (SSAFE) programme to build a comprehensive catalogue of space objects that will be used by the U.S. Air Force to increase situational awareness and manage collision avoidance.

The launch of Telesat’s Nimiq 4 aboard a Proton/Briz M from Baikonur is scheduled for 19 September, 2147 UTC. The Russian launch team today began final testing operations of the launcher components and subsystems and preparations for the fuelling of the launcher.

When Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov last January said the Russian defence ministry refused to launch South Africa’s SumbandilaSat because the country “refused to use our satellite,” nobody really knew what he meant. It wouldn’t have been the first translation error in an English-language report by a Russian news agency, anyway. Now a South African newspaper reports that the country had indeed ordered a spy satellite from Russia — and later cancelled that order.