Satellite News

Alphasat, the most sophisticated commercial communications satellite ever built, has left Astrium’s facilities in Toulouse after completion of its final integration and test campaign and is now en route to Kourou, French Guyana, to be prepared for its launch aboard an Ariane 5, scheduled for the end of July.

Thales Alenia Space has signed the contract for the development of ExoMars. Following a preliminary contract signed in 2008, this marks a major milestone for Thales Alenia Space, programme prime contractor.

ESA’s fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle, Albert Einstein, completed a flawless rendezvous with the International Space Station on 15 June when it docked smoothly with orbital outpost at 1407 UTC. The ATV is now connected to the Space Station.

With the exhaustion of its helium coolant, Herschel’s science mission ended on 29 April. But the satellite continued providing value to the end, serving as an orbiting testbed for control techniques that can’t normally be tested in flight.

Unless significant new hazards are found, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will stay on its original course past Pluto and its moons, after mission managers concluded that the danger posed by dust and debris in the Pluto system is less than they once feared.

Sharp Corporation has achieved the world’s highest solar cell conversion efficiency of 44.4%, using a concentrator triple-junction compound solar cell. These solar cells are used in a lens-based concentrator system that focuses sunlight on the cells to generate electricity.

Saft has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract from Boeing to build Li-ion batteries for the new SES-9 satellite. Separately, Saft has been awarded a US$1.2-million dollar contract from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., to supply the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery for a LEO (low Earth orbit) satellite programme.

GenCorp Inc. announced that it has completed the acquisition of substantially all operations of the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne business (Rocketdyne) from United Technologies Corporation.