Satellite News

Arianespace shareholders voted unanimously to convert the launch operator and subsidiary of Airbus Safran Launchers to an SAS (simplified joint-stock company) at the company’s Annual General Meeting, held in Paris on 27 March.

ISRO confirmed there had been an anomaly aboard the agency’s RISAT-1 radar imaging satellite but said it was not connected to a shedding event reported earlier by NASA.

An RS-25 rocket engine with a new flight-model engine controller and flight configuration software was successfully tested for the first time at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.

NASA has selected ten studies under the Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3) programme, to develop mission concepts using small satellites to investigate Venus, Earth’s moon, asteroids, Mars and the outer planets.

The launch of the ULA Atlas V rocket carrying the OA-7 Cygnus spacecraft for Orbital ATK and NASA has been postponed indefinitely.

At the time of writing this, the upcoming Ariane 5 launch with the SGDC and Koreasat-7 satellites remained scheduled for 23 March (UTC).

The third Lockheed Martin-built Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellite recently sent its first images back down to Earth.

Rocket: H-IIA; Payload: IGS Radar 5; Date: 17 March 2017, 0120 UTC; Launch site: Tanegashima Space Center, Japan. The reconnaissance satellite was successfully placed in orbit.