Satellite News

During its next flight, SpaceX will attempt the precision landing of a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time, on a custom-built ocean platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship. While SpaceX has already demonstrated two successful soft water landings, executing a precision landing on an unanchored ocean platform is significantly more challenging.

The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument that will fly on the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 spacecraft (JPSS-1), NOAA’s next polar orbiting environmental satellite, has been successfully integrated with the spacecraft.

Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin successfully completed the fourth of five planned launch and early orbit exercises to demonstrate new automation capabilities, information assurance and launch readiness of the U.S. Air Force’s next generation GPS III satellite and Operational Control System (OCX).

Galileo’s fifth satellite – recently salvaged from the wrong orbit to begin navigation testing – has been combined with three predecessors to provide its very first position fix.

Arianespace’s next medium-lift Soyuz to be launched from French Guiana is now complete following the integration of its “upper composite,” which consists of four O3b Networks connectivity satellites, their protective payload fairing and the Fregat upper stage.

Alaska Aerospace Corporation (AAC) has selected Lockheed Martin’s Athena rocket as its launch vehicle of choice for small and medium lift missions from the Kodiak Launch Complex (KLC).

ESA’s Venus Express has ended its eight-year mission after far exceeding its planned life. The spacecraft exhausted its propellant during a series of thruster burns to raise its orbit following the low-altitude aerobraking earlier this year.

Rocket: Atlas V 541; Payload: NROL-35 (USA 259); Date: 13 December 2014, 0319 UTC; Launch site: Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA. According to amateur observations, the payload was deployed into a 2,101 km x 37,748 km. Its final (highly elliptical) orbit after some manoeuvring is expected to be a standard Molniya 2:1 resonant ground track, where the orbital period is roughly 12 hours.