Satellite News

On 7 June 2007, the first satellite in Italy’s COSMO-SkyMed constellation was successfully launched in California. The Earth observation system was completed in 2010 (four satellites in total).

After its launch to the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX’s Dragon was successfully berthed and installed, bringing over 25 of NanoRacks’ customer payloads to the ISS, including the first-ever Chinese experiment to be brought aboard Station.

ESA has signed a contract with Thales Alenia Space for an upgrade of Europe’s EGNOS satellite navigation augmentation system.

Rocket: GSLV Mk III; Payload: GSAT-19; Date: 5 June 2017, 1158 UTC; Launch site: Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota, India. The new rocket,the most powerful ever built by India, placed the 3,136-kilogram GSAT-19 communications satellite into an on-target Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The separation occurred around 16 minutes after lift-off.

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: Dragon; Date: 3 June 2017, 2107:38; Launch site: Kennedy Space Center, USA. It is SpaceX’s eleventh Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-11) to the International Space Station.

A International Launch Services Proton Briz M is to launch EchoStar XXI on 8 June 2017 at 0345:47 UTC from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Orbital ATK, Inc. announced that its Cygnus spacecraft successfully unberthed from the International Space Station, beginning the next phase of its mission before it reenters Earth’s atmosphere.

The European GNSS Agency, GSA, through its GNSS Service Centre, has published the first of its regular quarterly performance reports on Galileo. This ‘European GNSS (Galileo) Initial Services Open Service’ report, now available online, covers the first three months of 2017.