Satellite News

Intelsat General, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intelsat, has announced that it has been awarded a long-term contract to provide commercial satellite communication services for a European defence network being provided by Airbus Defence and Space.

Fuelling operations have begun with the four Galileo spacecraft to be orbited next month from French Guiana on Arianespace’s first launch that uses its Ariane 5 in deploying Europe’s constellation of navigation satellites.

Essential data from the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander sent to its mothership Trace Gas Orbiter during the module’s descent to the Red Planet’s surface yesterday has been downlinked to Earth and is currently being analysed by experts.

NSR’s Satellite Capacity Pricing Index, second Edition (Q4 2016), released today, finds satellite capacity pricing in a prolonged freefall for most applications as more supply comes online and HTS offerings proliferate.

Rocket: Soyuz-FG; Payload: Soyuz-MS 02; Date: 19 October 2016, 0805 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The crewed transportation spacecraft was successfully put into low Earth orbit and is headed for the International Space Station (ISS).

The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) of ESA’s ExoMars 2016 has successfully performed the long 139-minute burn required to be captured by Mars and entered an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet, while contact has not yet been confirmed with the mission’s test lander from the surface.

Thales Alenia Space has opened a facility in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that will expand Europe’s capability with satellites that rely wholly on electric propulsion.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered safe mode on 19 October at about 0547 UTC. Early indications are a software performance monitor induced a reboot of the spacecraft’s onboard computer.