Satellite News

Rocket: Soyuz-2.1a; Payload: Progress-MS1 [Progress-MS, Progress 62P]; Date: 21 December 2015, 0844:39 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The cargo spacecraft was released into orbit as scheduled less than 10 minutes after lift-off.

SpaceX confirmed that the company is targeting launch of the 11 Orbcomm satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 22 December 2015 at 0129 UTC.

U.S. Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center announced the completion of two major milestones in the development and fielding of its new Space-based Infrared System ground system.

Airbus Group has signed a share purchase agreement with French private equity firm Apax Partners for the takeover of all of its commercial satellite communication business.

The Sentinel-3A satellite successfully passed a two-week functional test series. The platform and instrument subsystems have been deemed healthy and are ready to carry out their mission.

There’s once again some confusion surrounding the launches of Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr rockets, which however May be the result of sloppy reporting. In any case, the launch of the PAZ Earth observation satellite for Hisdesat, scheduled for 15 December, did not take place as planned. Just a technical delay?

NASA ordered a second Boeing crew mission to the International Space Station. This is the third in a series of four guaranteed orders NASA will make under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts.

Ball Aerospace has been selected by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to build and test a complete radiometric instrument on a Cubesat for a space mission under the In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) programme.