Satellite News

On 21 November 2015, communications signals from and contact with Amos-5. the telecommunications satellite designed and built by Academician M.F. Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems for Spacecom, were lost. On the day when the satellite ceased functioning ISS-Reshetnev Company set up a commission to search for possible causes of the satellite’s failure which was headed by Yuriy Maximov, deputy general director for quality at ISS-Reshetnev.

A laser-based mapping instrument has arrived at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver for integration onto NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.

Cobham recently received two awards totalling US$20.5 million to provide actuators for the Mars 2020 mission. NASA has again selected Cobham’s actuators to drive the rover wheels and provide steering motion, move the high-gain antenna and perform remote sensing mast deployment.

New LightSquared said it reached agreement with GPS device manufacturer Garmin on spectrum use parameters for terrestrial service in the L-Band relating to the new company’s licenses as regulated by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

SES announced that SES and YahLive – a company jointly established by SES and Yahsat – have agreed access for YahLive to additional capacity at the 52.0 / 52.5 degrees East orbital positions.

Rocket: Soyuz-FG; Payload: Soyuz TMA-19M; Date: 15 December 2015, 1103 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The crewed spacecraft docked manually with the International Space Station at 1733 UTC following a failed approach with the automatic Kurs system.

Thales Alenia Space has signed a EUR402 million contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to build the Copernicus Sentinel-1C and 1D environmental monitoring satellites, as part of Europe’s Copernicus programme.

Telesat announced that its new Telstar 12 VANTAGE satellite is now fully operational at 15 degrees West. Telstar 12 VANTAGE was launched by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on 24 November and is the first of a new generation of Telesat satellites with capacity optimised to serve the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly in demand by users.