Satellite News

To carry out additional checks on the mobile gantry system used on the Vega launch complex (SLV) at the CSG, Europe’s Spaceport, ESA and Arianespace have decided to postpone the Vega launch VV02 for 24 hours.

Judging from contradictory media reports, it appears unclear whether the recently launched Progress 19M cargo vessel can dock with the ISS as planned on 26 April after an antenna of the spacecraft’s KURS system failed to deploy.

Iridium Communications Inc. announced it has signed an agreement with Harris Corporation to enable the use of expanded hosted payload space on the Iridium NEXT platform, Iridium’s second-generation satellite constellation that is scheduled for launch beginning in early 2015.

Satrec Initiative (SI) of South Korea and the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) of United Arab Emirates jointly announced the development programme of the DubaiSat-3 Earth observation small satellite system.

Northrop Grumman Corporation reported financial results for the first quarter 2013.

Kymeta, a company that designs and commercialises software-enabled metamaterials-based electronic beamforming antennas for satellite communications, announced that it successfully closed a link with a Ka-band DTH satellite transporting high definition TV signals. Kymeta believes that this is the first time a metamaterials-based antenna has established a connection with a Ka-band satellite.

Rocket: Soyuz-U; Payload: Progress 19M [Progress 51P]; Date: 24 April 2013, 1021 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The vehicle was inserted into a 194 km x 247 km x 51.7 degrees parking low-Earth orbit.

The first launch of Russia’s new generation Angara rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome is delayed – again.