Satellite News

Engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio and Orbital ATK in Dulles, Virginia successfully conducted the first remote Spacecraft Fire Experiment, or Saffire I, carried inside an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo vehicle that departed the International Space Station on 14 June.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. has signed a C$48.5 million (including taxes) contract with the Government of Canada to deliver an advanced broad-area global maritime and Arctic surveillance solution, called Polar Epsilon 2 (PE2), to the Department of National Defence (DND).

Rocket: Ariane 5 ECA; Payload: EchoStar XVIII, BRISat; Date: 18 June 2016, 2138 UTC; Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana. This heavy-lift mission delivered a total calculated mass of 10,730 kg into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) – setting a new launch benchmark for the Ariane 5 ECA version.

The launch of an Ariane 5 with the EchoStar XVIII and BRIsat satellites on board has been rescheduled for 18 June, 2030-2140 UTC. The delay was caused by high upper level winds.

The delayed second part of the European-Russian ExoMars mission has received a EUR77 million cash injection, the European Space Agency said.

During operations to transfer the Ariane 5 ECA launcher for Flight VA230, an anomaly occurred with an umbilical connection on the upper portion of the launcher.

Construction of the Sentinel-2B optical satellite is complete. The spacecraft is the second of its type from Airbus Defence and Space, providing the “Colour Vision” of Europe’s Earth observation programme Copernicus, a joint project of the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Raytheon has passed both a qualification and a critical design review milestone as part of its development of the U.S. Air Force’s Global Positioning System Next Generation Operational Control System, or GPS OCX.