Satellite News

The two telecommunications satellites for Arianespace’s first Ariane 5 lift-off of 2017 are undergoing checkout at the Spaceport in preparation for a mid-February flight from French Guiana to geostationary transfer orbit.

Construction of Eutelsat 172B, the first high-power all-electric telecommunications satellite built in Europe, is now complete at the Airbus satellite assembly facilities in Toulouse.

On 20 January 2017, the completed eROSITA X-ray telescope boarded a cargo plane and was transported from Munich, where it had been built at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, to Moscow. It is expect to arrive at the premises of Lavochkin Association, in the Moscow suburb of Khimki on 25 January.

JAXA confirmed the completion of the critical operations phase of Arase (ERG, or Exploration of energisation and Radiation in Geospace).

China’s first high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite has passed all its in-orbit tests and is now operational, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND).