Satellite News

The U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin are ready to launch the fourth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) secure communications satellite, MUOS-4, here on Monday, 31 August aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The launch window is between 1007 and 1051 UTC.

NASA has completed the first developmental test series on the RS-25 engines that will power the agency’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

Rocket: GSLV-D6; Payload: GSAT-6; Date: 27 August 2015, 1122 UTC; Launch site: Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, India. Seventeen minutes after lift-off, the satellite was successfully placed into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) very close to the intended one.

Rocket: Chang Zheng 4C; Payload: Yaogan 27; Date: 27. August 2015, 0231 UTC; Launch site: Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China. The satellite was placed into a 1,200 km x 100 degrees orbit. The launch was not announced in advance by Chinese authorities.

Space Systems/Loral announced that “Sky Muster”(formerly NBN Co 1A), a high performance satellite designed and built for Australia’s new nbn broadband network, has arrived at the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, where it will be launched aboard an Ariane 5. The high capacity broadband satellite will provide service to more than 200,000 Australians.

The two European Galileo navigation satellites for Arianespace’s next mission from French Guiana have been fuelled at the Spaceport, readying them for integration with their Soyuz launcher.

Space Systems/Loral announced it was awarded a contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to study on-orbit robotic assembly of geostationary communications satellites. Called Dragonfly, the programme is designed to enable larger and more powerful satellites that cannot be launched fully assembled, to be packaged in pieces within a standard launch vehicle fairing.

Northrop Grumman Corporation delivered on schedule the telescope structure for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on 24 August. This paves the way for the integration of the 18 hexagonal mirrors that will help scientists observe the formation of the first stars and galaxies over 13.5 billion years ago.