Satellite News

NASA said it is pursuing new partnerships and collaborations in an Asteroid Grand Challenge to accelerate NASA’s existing planetary defence work, which will help find all asteroid threats to human population and know what to do about them. In parallel, NASA is developing an Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) — a first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect an asteroid to a safe orbit of Earth’s moon for future exploration by astronauts in the 2020s.

Rocket: Proton M/Briz M; Payload: Turksat 4A; Date: 14 February 2013, 2109 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The rocket lifted off as planned.

In order to allow Hispasat to perform complementary checks on its Amazonas 4A satellite, Arianespace will reschedule the Ariane 5 mission originally planned for 7 March.

The launcher for Arianespace’s initial Vega flight of 2014 began its build-up this week at the Spaceport in French Guiana, marking the first step in a mission campaign that will lead to its orbiting of the DZZ-HR high-resolution observation satellite.

On the night of 12-13 February 2014 (local time) the GLONASS-M #54 spacecraft left ISS-Reshetnev’s facilities and was transported by air to the Plesetsk cosmodrome.

Eutelsat Communications reported financial results for the first half of its fiscal years 2013-2014.

According to Euroconsult’s newly released research report, Profiles of Government Space Programs, global budgets for space programmes dropped to US$72.1 billion in 2013 following peak spending at US$72.9 billion in 2012.

Chinese media have confirmed that contact has been established with the country’s first moon rover, Yutu.