Satellite News

Arianespace and ESA, acting on behalf of the European Commission, have signed a contract for three launch services with Ariane 5 ES in order to step up the deployment of the European navigation system Galileo.

The launch date for the U.S. government’s CLIO satellite, built by Lockheed Martin, has been set for 16 September 2014. CLIO will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

In the coming months, the Sentinel-2A satellite will undergo a series of environmental tests at IABG, near Munich, Germany, to determine its suitability for use in space.

Boeing recently completed the Phase Two Spacecraft Safety Review of its Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 spacecraft and the Critical Design Review (CDR) of its integrated systems, meeting all of the company’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) milestones on time and on budget.

The ninth Soyuz launch from Kourou was given its go-ahead today with a dual-Galileo FOC satellite payload.

Northrop Grumman Corporation with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic is developing a preliminary design and flight demonstration plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 programme.

SSC company NanoSpace has signed a new contract with ESA to develop a Xenon flow controller for telecommunication satellites.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Electric Propulsion Technical Committee at the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics for its contribution to the Advanced Extremely High Frequency-1 (AEHF-1) Rescue Team.