Satellite News

JAXA’s ASTRO-H satellite, developed with institutions in Japan, the US, Canada and Europe, is ready to be mounted on an H-IIA rocket for launch on 12 February.

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter has broken the record to become humanity’s most distant solar-powered emissary. The milestone occurred on 13 January when Juno was about 793 million kilometers from the Sun.

Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems said it has begun working on a new LEO satellite platform.

McMurdo has been selected by a Northern Africa search and rescue (SAR) authority to deploy their next-generation MEOSAR (Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) satellite-aided SAR system. The contract is valued at over EUR4 million (US$4.5 million) with a performance period of 16 months.

Telespazio won at the end of 2015 the EUMETSAT tender for the supply of launch and early orbit phase services (LEOP) for two satellites, with an option for a third, of the new constellation Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), which will provide high resolution observations for meteorology and will support scientific research on climate change.

SES S.A. announced the transmission of a record number of TV channels on board its satellite fleet as of 31 December 2015. SES’s TV channel count grew by 11.3% to 7,268 channels during 2015, compared with an overall growth of 2% for the rest of the industry.

At Space Launch Complex 4 on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the static test fire of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the upcoming Jason-3 launch was completed on 12 January (UTC).

New dates have been set for three delayed Russian rocket launches.