Satellite News

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.

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: Formosat-5 [ROCSAT-5] ; Date: 24 August 2017, 1851 UTC; Launch site: Kennedy Space Center, USA. The satellite was released into a 729-km sun-synchronous orbit. 82 minutes and 56 seconds after launch, a ground antenna at Svalbard station (Norway) received the signal from Formosat-5 as expected.

Isro said it will launch its IRNSS-1H navigation satellite on 31 August at 1329 UTC, three days later than previously scheduled, to augment the existing seven satellites of the NavIC constellation.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. announced that Sky Perfect JSAT (SJC) selected satID version 3.20 as its satellite interference geolocation solution.

Russia’s Roskosmos State Space Corporation plans as many as 25 rocket launches this year, and about the same number of launches next year, Igor Komarov, the head of Roskosmos, was quoted as saying.

The United States Air Force (USAF) is reportedly preparing their secretive X-37B space plane for its fifth mission in early September. As always, most of the X-37B’s payload and mission is classified.

A smaller spacecraft has separated from the Kosmos-2519/Napryazhenie military satellite launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on 23 June, the Russian Defense Ministry’s press-service said.