Satellite News

Rocket: H-IIB F4; Payload: HTV 4 ‘Kounotori 4′; Date: 3 August 2013, 1948 UTC; Launch site: Tanegashima Space Center, Japan. The launch vehicle flew smoothly, and, at about 14 minutes and 59 seconds after lift-off, the separation of Kounotori 4 was confirmed.

Russia’s Rokot launcher is expected to return to flight in early September and take a Gonets communication spacecraft into orbit, Roskosmos Director Vladimir Popovkin was quoted as saying.

NASA has selected United Launch Services to launch the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.

Lockheed Martin delivered NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft to the Kennedy Space Center, on 2 August. The orbiter will now undergo three-and-a-half months of final processing in preparation for a November launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-401 rocket.

The Kepler team has continued exploratory recovery testing of Reaction Wheel 4 (RW4). On 25 July 2013, the wheel spun in both directions in response to commands.

A Lockheed Martin team has completed and passed the full range of environmental tests – electrical, mechanical and thermal – for the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument that will make crucial solar measurements when it flies on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellite mission, known as GOES-R.

The financial police have arrested Gabdullatif Murzakulov, President of Kazakhstan Garysh Sapary national company, for alleged corruption.