Satellite News

Globecomm Systems Inc. has retained Needham & Company to act as its financial advisor to review potential strategic alternatives to enhance shareholder value.

Thales Alenia Space announced that it has completed the delivery of 25 dishes, each 12 meters in diameter, for the antennas making up the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) astronomical observatory in northern Chile.

Spacecom announced that it has signed a follow-on, long-term contract with Magyar Telekom, the principal provider of telecommunications services in Hungary, worth up to US$7 million.

NASA has awarded a US$17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide a new addition to the International Space Station.

After six months of cruising quietly through the outer solar system, NASA’s Pluto-bound spacecraft came out of hibernation last weekend for three weeks of activity that include system checks, a new flight software upload and science data downloads.

In mid-January, NASA will take the next step in advancing robotic satellite-servicing technologies as it tests the Robotic Refuelling Mission, or RRM aboard the International Space Station. During five days of operations, controllers from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency will use the space station’s remotely operated Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or Dextre, robot to simulate robotic refuelling in space.

Arianespace’s Ariane 5 flight schedule in 2013 includes the company’s fourth launch of an Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to the International Space Station, with cargo loading of the large resupply spacecraft now underway in French Guiana.

NASA’s Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) is scheduled to launch on 11 February from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) mission, LDCM will add to the longest continuous data record of Earth’s surface as viewed from space.