Satellite News

Airbus Defence and Space will supply its latest generation Solid State Recorder for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, slated for launch in 2020. The contract was recently signed between Airbus Defence and Space and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Surrey Satellite Technology US LLC and BridgeSat Inc. announced a partnership to work towards developing a free-space optical communications system that will provide secure data downlinks from satellites to a proprietary ground network at faster speeds than equivalent radio frequency solutions.

After a successful fit-check with the launch vehicle adapter and separation test, the Sentinel-5p mission has passed another programme milestone on its way to launch.

Payload integration has begun for Arianespace’s Soyuz mission on 22 April with the flight’s three miniaturised auxiliary satellite passengers now installed on a special platform that enables multiple payloads to be deployed by the workhorse launcher.

The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has successfully docked the Dragon cargo spaceship, NASA said on Sunday, 10 April. The Falcon 9’s first stage, which successfully returned to the ground after the launch, will now be thoroughly tested.

Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.

Twenty years ago, the Proton K Launch Vehicle became the first Russian rocket to enter the global commercial launch services market.

Applications are now open for U.S. colleges and universities to compete for free CubeSat rides on United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rockets.