Satellite News

On 20 November 2018, technicians observed an error from NOAA’s GOES-17 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) – unrelated to the ongoing issues with the loop heat pipe – that resulted in degraded infrared imagery.

exactEarth Ltd. announced that its advanced AIS payload onboard the Spanish radar satellite, PAZ, has completed its commissioning phase and is now fully-operational.

Ball Aerospace has delivered the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) spectrometer to NASA after a successful final acceptance review.

Inmarsat has entered into an agreement with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) to be the first commercial customer to place an order for the new H3 launch vehicle.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket carrying a payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) will lift-off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 8 December at 0419 UTC. The mission is designated NROL-71.

BepiColombo, the joint ESA/JAXA spacecraft on a mission to Mercury, is now firing its thrusters for the first time in flight.

Eurobroadband Infrastructure (EBI), a subsidiary of Eutelsat, is launching a Preferred Partner Programme for the distribution of capacity on its KA-SAT satellite. The programme aims at revitalising the distribution of KA-SAT capacity to boost the deployment of Internet access via satellite.

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: CRS-16; Date: 5 December 2018, 1816 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The CRS cargo vessel successfully made it to orbit, which was the primary goal of the launch. However, the rocket’s first stage missed its goal of securing an upright landing on solid ground at Cape Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1.