Satellite News

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. announced that its Montreal operation has signed a contract in excess of C$10 million with EADS Astrium to provide an information solution for the Alphasat I-XL mission to augment its Broadband Global Area Network service for telephone and Internet.

Qualification testing of single board computer (SBC) engineering models for one of the most powerful computing systems ever flown in space has been completed by Northrop Grumman Corporation with subcontractor Maxwell Technologies.

U.S. Congress has cancelled Defense Department plans to buy and launch two commercial imagery satellites that were to form the Broad Area Space-Based Imagery Collection satellite system (BASIC). In related news, the Pentagon denied it had delayed the competition between Lockheed Martin and Boeing for the TSAT programme but said it would still be reviewing it.

Lockheed Martin Corporation reported third quarter 2008 financial results.

SpaceDev, Inc. announced that it has signed an agreement to be acquired by privately-held Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC).

Rocket: Pegasus; Payload: IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer); Date: 19 October 2008; Site: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands. Following a one-hour preplanned positioning flight, the Pegasus rocket was released from Orbital Science’s L-1011 carrier aircraft at approximately 1747 UTC.

Arianespace announced that SES has committed to three new primary launch services using Ariane, under the Multi Launch Agreement (MLA) signed in June 2007.

Spacehab Inc. announced that its Astrotech subsidiary was awarded a US$1.17 million contract from Alliant Techsystems in support of ATK’s planning and assembly of Ares I-X first stage hardware to be flown during the 2009 test flight for the development of NASA’s Ares I launch vehicle.