Satellite News

Russian deputy defence minister Oleg Ostapenko was named to replace Vladimir Popovkin as the head of the federal space agency Roskosmos.

NASA’s Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft was to…Read more

The Russian government plans to create a new state corporation to take over manufacturing facilities from the Federal Space Agency Roskosmos. According to some reports, Roskosmos head Vladimir Popovkin opposes the plan and is expected to resign.

Aerojet Rocketdyne announced that its XR-5 high-power Hall Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system has initiated orbit raising operations on the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) Space Vehicle 3 (SV-3) that launched 18 September aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Effective 1 October, Y.K. Bae Corporation has been awarded US$500,000 from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase 2 programme to further develop the company’s Photonic Laser Thruster (PLT) technology. This two year research and development phase will result in a scaled-up laboratory demonstration of PLT propulsion with space qualified lasers in a vacuum environment.

COM DEV Europe was selected to provide the Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TT&C) Transponder equipment to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) for the first six spacecraft in the FORMOSAT-7 global weather forecasting programme.

The Aerospace Corporation started implementing a partial work shutdown on 3 October after the U.S. Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center directed Aerospace to stop work immediately on all but excepted mission-critical tasks.

The 2013 programme of Roskosmos does not include any more GLONASS satellite launches, the Voice of Russia reported.