Satellite News

Following suspension on 31 March of the launch campaign activities of the Eutelsat 3B satellite, Sea Launch announced that its prime contractor, Energia Logistics, Ltd., will this week restart testing in preparation for the rollout of the Payload Unit and its integration with the Zenit-3SL launch vehicle before departing to the launch site in mid-May.

With the delivery of the system module and the propulsion module, the GOES-R weather satellite will now undergo the important integration and testing phase so that it can be available in late 2015 for a launch in early 2016.

NASA and CNES have agreed to jointly build, launch, and operate a spacecraft to conduct the first-ever global survey of Earth’s surface water and to map ocean surface height with unprecedented detail.

Xplornet Communications Inc. has contracted with ViaSat Inc. for all of the residential capacity covering Canada on the ViaSat (VSAT)-2 satellite. Already offering satellite Internet on ViaSat-1, rural broadband service provider Xplornet will be able to offer faster speeds and more data throughput for its customers with the doubling of bandwidth efficiency expected from ViaSat-2, which is scheduled for a mid-2016 launch.

DigitalGlobe, Inc. reported financial results for the quarter ending 31 March 2014.

Spaceflight Inc. announced it has secured a launch service agreement to orbit its “SHERPA” hosted payload and in-space transportation system. Spaceflight’s inaugural SHERPA mission will deploy up to 1,200 kilograms of customer satellite payloads into low Earth orbit during the second half of 2015 on an undisclosed launch vehicle.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 has arrived at its launch site on California’s central coast after travelling from Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, Arizona. The spacecraft now will undergo final tests and then be integrated on top of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket in preparation for a planned launch on 1 July.

The NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite is now the primary operational polar-orbiting spacecraft for NOAA’s operational weather forecasting mission. The National Weather Service (NWS) uses Suomi NPP data in its numerical weather prediction models.