Satellite News

Arianespace announced that it has signed a contract with satellite Internet company OneWeb to design, qualify and supply 21 payload dispensers for the deployment of the OneWeb constellation, along with five more on option.

The ExoMars spacecraft built by Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully completed its In-Orbit Commissioning Review (IOCR).

SENER has secured a contract to develop the magnetometer boom for JUICE, the mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore the Jovian system.

Iridium Communications Inc. announced the official launch of Satellite Time and Location (STL), an alternative or companion to traditional location-based technologies, and declared it ready for use. For the first time, end users now have access to accurate and resilient position, navigation and timing (PNT) technology that works anywhere on the planet, even indoors.

The payload assembly process is now complete for Arianespace’s medium-lift Soyuz flight on 24 May from French Guiana, which is to orbit the 13th and 14th Full Operational Capability (FOC) satellites at the service of Europe’s Galileo navigation system.

The first rocket launch from Russia’s Vostochny cosmodrome had to be postponed for one day on 27 April due to a faulty cable, which proved to have a design flaw, a panel of inquiry of the space corporation Roskosmos has found.

China plans to launch 30 Beidou navigation satellites during the 13th five-year plan period (2016-2020), capping its three-step strategy to build a global navigation system by 2020.

On 18 May 2016, the 111th customer CubeSat was deployed from the company’s NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer (NRCSD) via the JAXA Kibo airlock on the International Space Station (ISS).