Satellite News

The U.S. Air Force has asked the Defence Department’s chief arms buyer John Young to review its evaluation process in the Transformational Satellite (TSAT) competition. This may further delay the award of the multi-billion dollar contract.

United Launch Alliance announced the successful first hot-firing of the new Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-68A engine that will be used to power a future upgraded version of the Delta IV Heavy Lift launch vehicle. The hot-fire test was conducted at NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center, Mississippi.

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.