Satellite News

Rocket: Proton-M/Briz M; Payload: SES-4 (NSS-14); Date: 14 February 2012, 1936 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. After a 9 hour, 12-minute mission, the Briz M successfully released the SES-4 satellite into geostationary transfer orbit.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, has issued a NASA Research Announcement for the Space Launch System (SLS) Advanced Booster risk-reduction effort.

MSG-3 has passed its final System Verification Test (SVT), prior to launch this summer.

SES S.A. announced that the AMC-3 satellite is being relocated from its former location of 87 degrees West to 67 degrees West to optimise coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are developing an optical observation system with a powerful laser, the pulses from which can detect particles only a few centimetres in diameter and allow determination of their orbits. The concept was tested for the first time in January 2012, in collaboration with the Laser Station in the Austrian city of Graz.

The Swiss Space Center at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) announced the launch of CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first instalment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris.