Satellite News

Rocket: PSLV ‘XL’; Payload: IRNSS-1F; Date: 10 March 2016, 1031 UTC; Launch site: Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, India. Controllers at ISRO’s ground station in Hassan took over command of the 1,425-kilogram satellite soon after its deployment from the PSLV’s fourth stage at 1051 UTC.

The assembly of Russia’s Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying an advanced Resurs-P Earth remote sensing satellite has been completed, Russian Roskosmos state corporation said in a statement. The rocket is expected to lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 12 March at 1856 UTC.

Orbital Sciences will buy from Russia’s NPO Energomash research and production association eight more RD-181 engines for the Antares rockt, the Russian manufacturer reported on its website.

United Launch Alliance has awarded XCOR Aerospace with a new contract through the United States Air Force to develop an upper stage propulsion system for Vulcan, ULA’s next-generation launch system.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roskosmos intends to reduce the costs of the country’s new Angara rocket by means of cutting the RD-191 engines’ production cost, CEO of the engines’ manufacturer NPO Energomash research and production association Igor Arbuzov was quoted as saying.

The H-2A rocket will be retired within several years to make way for a new generation of launch vehicle. Its final mission is scheduled in fiscal 2023, the science ministry announced.

NASA has selected two proposals for new Earth science investigations that will put new instruments in low-Earth orbit to track harmful particulate air pollutants and study the development of tropical cyclones.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been selected by NASA to deliver a concept study for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Wide Field Instrument (WFI), the agency’s next major astrophysics project to follow the 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.