Satellite News

Rocket: Atlas V 421; Payload: Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS); Date: 13 March 2015, 0244 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. After reaching orbit, each spacecraft deployed from the rocket’s upper stage sequentially, in five-minute increments, beginning at 0416, with the last separation occurring at o431 UTC. NASA scientists and engineers were able to confirm the health of all separated spacecraft at o440 UTC.

The sixth Galileo satellite of Europe’s navigation system has now entered its corrected target orbit, which will allow detailed testing to assess the performance of its navigation payload.

Solar Orbiter’s STM will leave Airbus Defence and Space in UK on 23 March., to be delivered to IABG, near Munich in Germany, for mechanical testing. This is an important step in the verification phase of the project. Scheduled to be launched in 2018, the Solar Orbiter mission will study how our Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, the bubble of space filled with particles and fields in which the Earth orbits.

European Space Propulsion (ESP), a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne, recently received a contract from Airbus Space and Defence and Thales Alenia Space for the development of a new ThermoThrottle to provide variable Xenon Flow Control (XFC) for the ESP XR-5E Hall Thruster, the European version of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Zero-Erosion Hall Effect Thruster.

ViaSat Technologies Limited, an affiliate of ViaSat, Inc., has signed a credit agreement for a US$525 million direct loan facility from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank).

With demand for Earth imagery increasing, manufacturers are expected to produce more than 200 remote sensing satellites over the next 10 years, according to Forecast International.

15 years ago, on 12 March 2000, the Ekspress-A2 [a.k.a. Ekspress-6A] telecommunications satellite designed and manufactured by ISS-Reshetnev Company was launched.