Satellite News

The CYGNSS launch planned for Wednesday, 14 December was delayed one day due to an issue with flight parameter data used by spacecraft software.

Final integration has begun for Arianespace’s year-ending Ariane 5 mission as the Star One D1 and JCSAT-15 satellites are installed on the heavy-lift launcher for lift-off from the Spaceport in French Guiana on 21 December.

Thales Alenia Space Spain has delivered the second of three panels used to mount the Observation Data Communication Subsystem (ODCS) on GEO-KOMPSAT-2 satellites being built by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, has chosen Thales Alenia Space to provide a key subassembly in the ground segment for the Eumetsat Polar System – Second Generation (EPS-SG), comprising data acquisition, processing and product generation for the polar-orbit meteorological satellites Metop SG-A et Metop SG-B.

NASA is rescheduling the launch of its Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) spacecraft for no earlier than Wednesday, 14 December from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, during a one-hour window that opens at 1320 UTC.

The H-II Transfer Vehicle “KOUNOTORI6” (HTV6) started its final approach to the International Space Station (ISS), and was captured by the ISS robotic arm at 1039 UTC on 13 December.

The U.S. Air Force approved Lockheed Martin’s design to upgrade the current GPS satellite ground control system with new capabilities that will enable it to operate GPS III satellites.

Rocket: Chang Zheng 3B; Payload: Fengyun 4A; Date: 10 December 2016, 1611 UTC; Launch site: Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China. The Fengyun-4 satellite, the first of China’s second-generation weather satellites in geostationary orbit to have been launched, is also the country’s first quantitative remote-sensing satellite in high orbit.