Satellite News

ESA and Airbus Defence and Space as the industrial prime contractor have signed the first contractual documents to start the development and construction of a series of MetOp Second Generation (MetOp-SG) weather satellites.

The team preparing NASA’s next Mars lander mission gained a green light today to begin building the spacecraft, which will study how Earthlike planets form. Lockheed Martin will now begin building the InSight spacecraft.

The Space Foundation has released The Space Report 2014:The Authoritative Guide to Global Space Activity. Data was compiled from original research and a wide variety of public and private sources, and analysed by Space Foundation researchers.

The Supervisory Board of OHB AG has approved the Management Board’s resolution to convert the company into a Societas Europaea (SE).

The first two Galileo Full Operational Capability (FOC) satellites are a confirmed “fit” for their Arianespace Soyuz launch later in 2014 after making initial contact with the medium-lift mission’s dual-payload dispenser in French Guiana.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has received a contract from Stratolaunch Systems Corporation (SSC) to provide six RL10C-1 production engines, with an option to provide an additional six RL10C-1 production engines at a later date, for the third stage of a commercial air-launch system. The inaugural launch of Thunderbolt, the air-launch vehicle designed and developed for SSC, is scheduled for 2018.

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that Thaicom PCL has authorised the company to begin the development, manufacturing, integration and testing process for the Thaicom 8 commercial communications satellite.

NASA has awarded ITT Space Systems LLC, a subsidiary of Exelis, Inc. a contract to provide the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI), a scanning radiometer capable of measuring Earth’s reflected sunlight and emitted thermal radiation.