Satellite News

Aeolus, the European Space Agency’s wind sensing satellite, is leaving Stevenage, UK, in the next few days on the first part of its journey to space. It will be shipped to Toulouse, France, for final testing before it travels to French Guiana towards the end of the year ready for launch on a Vega launcher.

Europe’s Galileo navigation satellite system is suffering from clocks failing onboard a number of satellites at an alarming rate. None of the 18 spacecraft launched so far had to be declared a total loss, but the project may experience further delays as the cause of the failures is being investigated, ESA director general Jan Woerner was quoted as saying.

Activity for Arianespace’s initial mission in 2017 with the lightweight Vega is fully underway in French Guiana, where the launch vehicle’s build-up is starting and its Sentinel-2B payload has begun the pre-flight checkout process in preparation for an early March lift-off.

Raytheon said it reached another milestone in developing the U.S. Air Force Global Positioning System Next-Generation Operational Control System, known as GPS OCX, with the completion of the Factory Qualification Test of the Launch and Checkout System (LCS).

UrtheCast Corp. has entered into a binding agreement with a confidential government customer for the sale and shared operation of the first two satellites in the OptiSAR Constellation, the world’s first commercial EO constellation with integrated optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors, for US$180 million.

The recently launched Iridium NEXT satellites carry hosted payloads that will track planes and ships. Here are a few details.

ABS announced it has been granted the Network, Applications and Gateway Operator licenses to serve Papua New Guinea (PNG) from the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA). The licenses awarded will allow ABS to operate as a telecom operator as well as a satellite service provider.

Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, an independent, research-driven graduate-level university in the United Arab Emirates, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Thales/Thales Alenia Space and French engineering university MINES ParisTech to develop applications for the Stratobus drone-satellite hybrid airship.