Satellite News

ISRO carried out a major technology demonstration on 5 July, the first in a series of tests to qualify a Crew Escape System, which is a critical technology relevant for human spaceflight.

Airbus has won two studies from the European Space Agency (ESA) to design a Sample Fetch Rover and an Earth Return Orbiter. These two elements will be critical parts of a mission to return samples of the planet Mars to Earth before the end of the next decade. NASA and ESA signed a letter of intent in April 2018 to pursue a Mars Sample Return mission.

Russia’s Roskosmos space corporation and its Chinese counterparts signed a number of agreements on space co-operation last month during a summit between Presidents Putin and Xi. The agreements followed a deal signed in March on Russian-Chinese co-operation in the exploration of the moon and outer space, and the creation of joint orbital groups.

Europe’s next four Galileo satellites have been fuelled at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, in preparation for their launch on 25 July.

The laser ranging interferometer (LRI) instrument has been successfully switched on aboard the recently launched twin U.S./German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites.

The Aerospace Corporation announced that it achieved first light on an infrared sensor suite named CubeSat Multispectral Observing System (CUMULOS), which was flown as a secondary payload on the Integrated Solar Array and Reflectarray Antenna (ISARA) CubeSat–a mission managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), operated by Aerospace, and sponsored by NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program.

Vladimir Solntsev, the head of the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia) is to step down on 3 August, corporation officials were quoted as saying.

Russia does not have enough time to launch three Soyuz-ST launch vehicles from French Guiana before the end of 2018 as planned.