Satellite News

Rocket: Atlas V 431; Payload: EchoStar XIX (aka Jupiter 2); Date: 18 December 2016, 1913 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. EchoStar XIX deployed its solar arrays on schedule and is successfully performing post-launch manoeuvres according to plan.

Millennium Space Systems said it has completed the development of and shipped its first ALTAIR satellite, a pre-production pathfinder spacecraft designed to demonstrate advanced avionics, guidance & control, additive manufacturing, power systems, RF communications and onboard processing technologies.

ViaSat Inc. and Boeing, announced that Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the first two ViaSat-3 class satellites was completed on 16 November 2016.

OneWeb Ltd., which is building a constellation of satellites to enable global broadband access, and SoftBank Group Corp. announced that OneWeb has secured US$1.2 billion in funded capital from SoftBank and existing investors, of which US$1 billion will come from SoftBank.

SES S.A. and CANAL+ Group have confirmed the signature of a long-term, multi-year, multi-transponder framework agreement for SES satellite capacity in both France and Africa.

SSC and RADI (The Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth), under China Academy of Science (CAS), has signed a contract regarding services to be provided by SSC utilising the new RPSS-1 antenna installed by SSC at the satellite station at Esrange Space Center.