Satellite News

Google Inc has acquired solar-powered drone maker Titan Aerospace. Titan’s “Atmospheric satellites could help bring Internet access to millions of people, and help solve other problems, including disaster relief and environmental damage like deforestation,” Google said in a statement.

Airbus Defence and Space said it has successfully completed the final integration and testing of MEASAT-3b. The satellite left the Airbus Defence and Space facilities in Toulouse, France, and has been transported by air to Kourou, French Guiana.

The Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) has announced that DubaiSat-2′s in orbit commissioning is complete and the satellite is now fully operational.

SES and Milano Teleport announced that they have signed a capacity and ground satellite infrastructure deal to provide connectivity to Mario Zucchelli, the Italian research station located at Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica, managed by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA).

NASA’s Ames Research Center will launch several small satellites into space aboard NASA’s next commercial cargo resupply flight of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. These experiments include a next-generation smartphone satellite, 100 stamp-sized nanosatellites and life science experiments.

Rocket: Atlas V 541; Payload: NROL-67; Date: 10 April 2014, 1745 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. Launch coverage ended four minutes after lift-off. Since then, there have been no official updates.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx programme has successfully completed a comprehensive technical review of the mission and has been given approval to begin building the spacecraft, flight instruments and ground system.

Rocket: Soyuz-U; Payload: Progress M-23M (ISS Progress 55); Date: 9 April 2014, 1526 UTC, Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The unmanned Progress vessel docked with the ISS almost exactly 6 hours after lift-off, using the automatic Kurs system.