Satellite News

Inmarsat has announced a key infrastructure milestone for its European Aviation Network (EAN), following the successful test and validation of the EAN Satellite Access Station (SAS).

UrtheCast Corp. and Land O’ Lakes, Inc., a U.S. agribusiness and food company, announced a long-term agreement for GEOSYS, a Land O’Lakes subsidiary, to purchase geospatial data from the UrtheDaily Constellation, UrtheCast’s planned constellation of Earth observation satellites.

Japan’s HTV-6, or “Kounotori-6”, supply ship re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 1506 UTC on 5 February, more than a week after leaving the International Space Station. The onboard Kounotori Integrated Tether Experiment (KITE), designed to clear space junk from the Earth’s orbit, ended in failure.

Boeing and NanoRacks LLC will partner to develop the first privately funded commercial airlock, enabling the United States to potentially triple the number of small satellites it can deploy from the International Space Station (ISS) during a single airlock cycle.

The first commercial launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket after engine checks is now scheduled to take place in April, the head of Russian space corporation Roskosmos Igor Komarov said.

The dual use (civil and military) SGDC Geostationary Defense and Strategic Communications Satellite built by Thales Alenia Space for Brazil is ready to be shipped the Kourou launch pad in French Guyana to be launched by Ariane 5 rocket next March.

DigitalGlobe, Inc. announced that the WorldView-4 satellite successfully completed in-orbit testing and calibration and began serving its first direct access customer on 1 February. Additional direct access customers will be added to WorldView-4 service throughout 2017.

Planet Labs has entered into an agreement with Alphabet/Google, wherein Planet will acquire the Terra Bella business including the SkySat constellation of satellites, and Google upon closing, will enter into a multi-year contract to purchase Earth-imaging data from Planet.