Satellite News

Rocket: Soyuz 2-1b; Payload: GLONASS K; Date: 30 November 2014, 2152 UTC; Launch site: Plesetsk, Russia. The navigation satellite was successfully placed in its target orbit.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced another delay of the launch of Hayabusa 2, again because of bad weather.

NASA has approved the completion of Boeing’s first milestone in the company’s path toward launching crews to the International Space Station from the United States under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract.

The service module belonging to China’s unmanned lunar orbiter has reached the Earth-Moon second Lagrange Point (L2), the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said.

Lockheed Martin has completed thermal vacuum testing on the fourth satellite scheduled to launch and join the U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) constellation.

The outlines of an accord to fund development of a new Ariane 6 satellite launch vehicle appeared to be in place after Germany dropped its insistence on a prior upgrade to the current Ariane 5, officials said according to news agencies.