Satellite News

Moon Express, Inc. (MoonEx) has been awarded US$1 million by Google Lunar XPRIZE for its recent lander test flights, taking home the only Lander System milestone prize awarded for a full lander system demonstration. The tests were conducted at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, utilising a test range located at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility.

The Space Foundation announced it will present the Rosetta Comet Exploration Team with the 2015 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., Award for Space Exploration.

In preparation of the launches of the ESA Copernicus Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-2B satellites on Rokot in 2015 and 2016, the launch adapters for these missions were fit-checked successfully.

Following intense work during the past weeks between all partners involved with the EDRS programme, in particular the European Commission, ESA and Airbus, the business prospects of EDRS have been consolidated.

Integral, one of ESA’s longest-serving and most successful space observatories, has begun a series of four thruster burns carefully designed to balance its scientific life with a safe reentry in 2029.

SpaceX has dropped a lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force after winning an agreement from the government that the company will be certified for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) programme, according to a statement from SpaceX.

Preparations for the launch of the second Global Xpress satellite, Inmarsat-5 F2 (I-5 F2), are now at an advanced stage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) successfully conducted a manoeuvre designed to raise the spacecraft’s minimum altitude sufficiently to extend orbital operations and delay the probe’s inevitable impact onto Mercury’s surface until early next spring.