Satellite News

Rocket: Minotaur IV; Payload: ORS-5, three CubeSats; Date: 26 August 2017, 0604 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. Approximately 28 minutes after lift-off, the Minotaur IV deployed the ORS-5 satellite into its targeted low inclination orbit 599 kilometers above the Earth.

The ULA Atlas V carrying the NROL-42 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance office is scheduled for 14 September. The Atlas V will lift off from Space Launch Complex-3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The Khrunichev Space Center is switching over from the production of Proton-M carrier rockets to the output of Angara-A5 and Angara-A5M launchers, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said during his visit to the enterprise on Friday.

A navigation satellite GLONASS-M No. 52 left ISS-Reshetnev Company’s facilities in Zheleznogorsk and has already arrived at the Plesetsk launch site.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its thrusters to position itself on the correct course for its upcoming Earth flyby. The spacecraft, which is on a two-year outbound journey to asteroid Bennu, performed a precision course adjustment on 23 August to prepare for the gravity slingshot on 22 September.

The launch site for the Falcon 9 carrying Formosat-5 was of course Vandenberg Air Force Base, not Kennedy Space Center. Thanks to everybody who wrote in to correct the mistake.