Satellite News

Rocket: Soyuz-FG; Payload: Soyuz TMA-14; Date: 26 March 2009, 1143 UTC; Site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Less than 10 minutes after launch the crewed spacecraft reached orbit. Its antennas and solar arrays were deployed shortly afterward.

The second of three next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites was recently shipped from Boeing’s satellite manufacturing facility in El Segundo, Calif., to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, where it will undergo final preparations for launch this spring.

Northrop Grumman Corporation successfully completed the Critical Design Audit of the Space Segment for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).

A high-reliability heritage flight cryocooler built by Northrop Grumman Corporation is now operational, following its launch aboard Japan’s Ibuki, also known as the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), earlier in February.

Lockheed Martin has partnered with the University of Florida to develop and launch five miniature satellites to test innovative new space solutions.

Harris Corporation announced that the OS/COMET COTS product for satellite control now includes NEO, a Network Enabled Operations capability for platform-independent remote access.

WildBlue and EchoStar Satellite Services, a division of EchoStar Corporation, announced that the two companies have completed an agreement for WildBlue to lease additional Ka band capacity from EchoStar. This additional capacity comes from EchoStar’s currently leased in-space satellites.