Satellite News

With lift-off just five days away, ESA’s GOCE spacecraft – encased in the protective half-shells of the launcher fairing – has been transported from the cleanroom and installed in the launch tower at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

RazakSAT, Malaysia’s first remote sensing satellite, will be blasted into space from Kwajalein Island on 21 April.

Eutelsat Communications has selected Thales Alenia Space to build the W3C satellite. Eutelsat will select the launcher for the satellite separately at a later stage, the company said.

The Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS), an advanced scientific instrument that will be launched on the Glory satellite, has successfully completed environmental testing and was officially turned over to NASA on 11 March by the Raytheon Company, which built the instrument.

NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter has properly followed commands to shut down and restart, a strategy by its engineers to clear any memory flaws accumulated in more than five years since Odyssey’s last reboot.

The launch of the space shuttle Discovery was cancelled just hours ahead of blast off.
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International Launch Services (ILS) announced a contract for the launch of the ViaSat-1 satellite on an ILS Proton. The spacecraft was originally scheduled for launch aboard an Ariane 5 in the same time frame.
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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V will launch the second Wideband Global SATCOM satellite for the U.S. Air Force on 14 March from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch window is 0125 – 0203 UTC. If the launch scrubs, the next attempt is set for 16 March with a launch window of 0124 – 0202 UTC.
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