Satellite News

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced the successful start of the latest phase of hybrid rocket motor qualification testing for the Dream Chaser flight vehicle. SNC completed two tests this week at its rocket test facility in San Diego, California.

COM DEV International Ltd. announced second quarter results for the three-month period ending 30 April 2013.

The Russian MKA-PN1 satellite launched last year to map the Arctic has stopped working, Interfax reported citing a space industry source.

The Ariane 5 that launched the ATV-4 ‘Albert Einstein’ also carried the STEREX experiment, funded by the DLR Space Administration and the European Space Agency. The heart of this system consists of four cameras incorporated into the Ariane 5. Two of these cameras recorded the separation of ATV-4 for the first time in 3D.

NASA’s Orion crew module successfully passed its static loads tests. To ensure Orion will be ready for its flight test next year, engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida built a 6-m-tall static loads test fixture for the crew module with hydraulic cylinders that slowly push or pull on the vehicle, depending on the type of load being simulated.

Rocket: Ariane 5 ES; Payload: ATV-4 Albert Einstein; Date: 5 June 2013, 2142 UTC; Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana. The unmanned cargo vessel separated from the upper stage at 2256 UTC, about half an hour later deployed its solar arrays and is now on its way to the ISS, with a docking scheduled in ten days’ time. It will remain attached to the station for about five months.

A Lockheed Martin-led industry team has completed successful functional integration tests of the spacecraft bus and network communications equipment on the first satellite of the next generation Global Positioning System, known as GPS III.

A network of remote sensing satellite ground stations that covers all of China’s territory has been completed, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced.