Satellite News

Rocket: Proton K/Block DM 2; Payload: Kosmos 2479; Date: 30 March 2012, 0549 UTCF; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The classified military payload, thought to be an early warning satellite of the Oko type, was successfully deployed in the targeted orbit at 1227 UTC.

The launch of a Delta IV carrying a national security payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office has been pushed back to 2 April.

Space Partnership International has signed a US$10 million consultancy deal with the state-run Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. SPI Managing Director Bruce D. Kraselsky says his U.S.-based company will design the satellite and hire a company to build and launch it by 2015.

Astrium’s teams have successfully completed the in-orbit delivery of the SSOT satellite system, which launched from the European spaceport in French Guiana on 16 December 2011.
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The Space Network Ground Segment Sustainment effort successfully completed its Key Decision Point – B review at NASA allowing the project to proceed into Phase B of its lifecycle, the Mission Definition Phase. During this next phase, lasting approximately eight months, the network will hold its Preliminary Design Review and complete additional project planning.
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Euroconsult announced that global budgets for space programmes have reached a plateau of roughly US$70 billion, confirming a slowdown in expansion experienced by the space industry for the last 10 years.
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Astrium has been awarded two contracts from the Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) for the delivery of two telecommunication satellites Ekspress AM4R and Ekspress AM7. Astrium will build the satellites based on the Eurostar E3000 platform and Khrunichev-built Proton launchers will deliver them to orbit in 2014.
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Meteor 1-1, the Soviet Union’s first fully operational weather satellite, fell in Antarctica on 26 March after more than four decades in orbit, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
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