Satellite News

JSC ISS – Reshetnev Company (formerly known as NPO-PM) has signed a contract with SAFT, France, for the delivery of Li-ion batteries.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. announced that is has signed a C$4 million contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to provide the data and information processing solution for ESA’s next Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite Sentinel-1, expected to launch in 2011.

COM DEV USA, LLC, a subsidiary of COM DEV International Ltd. , announced that it has been awarded a US$1.6 million Authorisation to Proceed (ATP) to supply passive microwave components for a U.S. Government civil space programme.

NASA said its planet-hunting Kepler satellite, scheduled to launch in 2009, has survived an extreme temperature test.

Raytheon Company said it achieved a significant programme milestone for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) by successfully completing ground segment acceptance testing of the data processing segment at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility three weeks ahead of schedule.

The target launch date for space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been reset to 15 October, 0219 UTC.

Rocket: Zenit 3SL/Block DM-SL; Payload: Galaxy 19; Date: 24 September 2008, 0928 UTC; Site: Odyssey Launch Platform, positioned on the equator at 154 degrees West longitude in the Pacific Ocean. Just over an hour later, the Block DM-SL upper stage inserted the 4,690 kg satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.