Satellite News

Launched in June 1999 for an intended two-year mission, NASA’s SeaWinds scatterometer instrument on the QuikSCAT spacecraft was turned off on 2 October in accordance with its end-of-mission plan.

Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies, Inc. have agreed to combine in an all stock merger of equals. Under the terms of the merger agreement, which was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, L3 shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 1.30 shares of Harris common stock for each share of L3 common stock.

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft carrying Nick Hague of NASA and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roskosmos was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz-FG at 0840 UTC on 11 October. Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with a booster and the ascent to orbit was aborted resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft in Kazakhstan.

The U.S. Air Force announced the award of three Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Launch Service Agreements to (in alphabetical order) Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK), and United Launch Alliance.

Maxar Technologies Ltd. announced that it is advancing its domestication into the United States and expects to complete this process in January 2019, subject to securityholder approval.

Rocket: Chang Zheng 2C/YZ-1S; Payload: two Yaogan-32 reconnaissance satellites (Yaogan Weixing-32 Group-1); Date: 10 October 2018, 0243 UTC; Launch site: Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, China. Success of the launch was confirmed within 40 minutes by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

Boeing announced its investment in Accion Systems Inc., a startup pioneering scalable electric propulsion technology to transform satellite capabilities in and beyond Earth’s orbit.

Firefly Aerospace, Inc., a developer of orbital launch vehicles for the small to medium satellite market, announced the execution of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with York Space Systems for the development of integrated launch services and spacecraft mission solutions.