Satellite News

Most of the consumer guides to making a choice between satellite TV or cable in your home count on explaining technology and functionality. Yes, it’s important to know whether or not the service you’re paying for is going to work if it’s snowing, but the fact of the matter is, cable and satellite TV are pretty evenly matched when it comes to their technological advances.

Whether it’s spending hours in front of a HD set at home or making the hours pass quicker at work by glancing at a TV, television as a medium gets a bad rap. From the old wives’ tales that sitting too close will make you go blind (it won’t) to the accusations that all programming is explosions and bad guys, sometimes the better offerings of TV get overlooked. Yes, occasionally a good series on HBO or Showtime draws intellectuals in, but in the past, making a case for the value of television programming was something that no intellectual, let alone parent, wanted to do.

Rocket: Atlas V; Payload: PAN (P360, USA 207); Date: 8 September 2009, 2135 UTC; Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The satellite was released into its target orbit approx. two hours after launch.

China Great Wall Industry Corp. (CGWIC) said it signed a launch services contract with a customer in the Indian Ocean region. The company did not disclose the customer’s name.

The Palapa-D communications satellite has arrived in geostationary orbit, manufacturer Thales Alenia Space and operator Indosat announced.

Sirius XM Radio announced that Sirius FM-5, the newest addition to the Sirius XM satellite fleet, was recently placed into service on the Sirius network.

As it nears 17.6 million miles distance from Earth, the Kepler spacecraft continues to scan the Milky Way galaxy, near the Cygnus constellation, for Earth-sized planets. The spacecraft subsystems are performing nominally, as the science team and engineers are preparing for upcoming events.

Intelsat announced contracts with several customers for satellite capacity.