Satellite News

The Jason-2 ocean altimetry satellite received its in-flight acceptance at an assessment meeting in Toulouse recently.

The U.S. Department of Defense has approved plans to buy and launch two commercial-class imagery satellites to complement its classified constellation of spy craft.

The 10 October launch date of NASA’s shuttle mission STS-125 to the Hubble Space Telescope is in jeopardy because of a problem with insulation on the replacement batteries for the telescope, and (possibly) also because of a malfunction aboard the spacecraft itself.

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that the U.S. Air Force Space and Missiles Systems Center (SMC) recently placed an order for a new Minotaur IV launch vehicle under the company’s Orbital/Suborbital Program-2 (OSP-2) contract.

TerreStar Corporation announced that it had sold its remaining 29,926,074 shares of non-voting common stock of SkyTerra Communications, Inc. for a total of approximately US$123 million in a series of transactions.

A Lockheed Martin /Northrop Grumman team has successfully tested a high performance deployable radiator system to meet the stringent mission requirements of the Transformational Satellite Communications System (TSAT) constellation.

General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems has successfully completed the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

The Russian unmanned resupply spacecraft Progress M-65 docked with the International Space Station, four days late due to Hurricane Ike, Interfax news agency reported.