Satellite News

The Soyuz for Arianespace’s next medium-lift mission is in the launch zone at French Guiana, where it stands ready to receive the two spacecraft passengers that will join Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system.

Japan will launch an information-gathering satellite (IGS) with an optical reconnaissance payload on an H-2A rocket on 26 March (UTC).

The second ground test of the power system of China’s next-generation rocket was completed Monday, ahead of its first flight in 2016.

The U.S. Air Force announced that the phase one results of the independent review panel tasked by Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James to review the process for certifying SpaceX as an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) provider.

Orbital ATK, Inc. has been awarded a contract by NASA to design, produce and integrate up to three Joint Polar Satellite Systems (JPSS) spacecraft, to be operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide critical weather forecasting data and to advance environmental and oceanographic science.

After avoiding use of the rover’s flash memory for three months, the team operating NASA’s 11-year-old Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reformatted the vehicle’s flash memory banks and resumed storing some data overnight for transmitting later.

Pre-construction activities have begun recently at Academician M.F. Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems, paving the way for the phase II of the Integration and Test Facility.