Satellite News

NASA and SpaceX announced the launch of SpaceX’s fifth commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station now will occur no earlier than Tuesday, 6 January.

The launch of Russia’s Strela rocket with a Kondor-E radar imaging satellite from the Baikonur cosmodrome has been postponed until 19 December.

The second Global Xpress (GX) satellite – Inmarsat-5 F2 – has arrived at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in anticipation of its launch early in 2015.

Airbus DS Space Systems engineers have developed an upper-stage engine demonstrator for the European Space Agency (ESA). Results of the recently completed test campaign are promising; the engine meets all requirements to replace other models currently in service, such as on the Vega rocket.

The eighth Boeing Global Positioning System IIF satellite has completed on-orbit checkout and joined the active 31-satellite constellation.

DigitalGlobe, Inc. reported that, as a result of its annual satellite life review, it will extend the useful lives of two of its satellites: WorldView-1 and WorldView-2. The company has also assigned an initial useful life to its newest satellite, WorldView-3 that is slightly longer than the original use lives assigned to WorldView-1 and WorldView-2.

The first six satellites of the Orbcomm Generation Two (OG2) constellation, designed and built by Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) Space Systems, have completed all on-orbit checkout procedures, culminating in the transfer of operations from SNC to Orbcomm in mid-September.

Russia’s Energomash scientific and production company has concluded a contract to deliver RD-181 rocket engines to Orbital Sciences. The engines will be used for the first stage of Antares rockets beginning 2015.