Satellite News

US small satellite launch company Rocket Lab is gearing up for the company’s third orbital launch of the year, the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa)-19 mission for NASA.

Thales Alenia Spac announced that it has signed two contracts with Korea, one with Aerospace Industries, LTD. (KAI) and one with Hanwha Systems Corporation (HSC) to develop a constellation of high-resolution observation radar satellites for the Agency for Defence Development (ADD), known as Korea “425 Project.”

Millennium Space Systems completed the final phase of its ALTAIR Pathfinder satellite mission on 17 November.

Rocket: Ariane 5 ECA; Payload: GSAT-11, GEO-KOMPSAT-2A; Date: 4 December 2018, 2037 UTC; Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana. In its final launch of 2018, Ariane 5 placed the satellites in geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).

RUAG Space has completed and passed a Manufacturing Readiness Review (MRR) for the Payload Fairing for United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V-500. This will be the first U.S.-made flight hardware by RUAG Space USA in Decatur, Alabama.

MDA was selected by Airbus to provide a conceptual design of a rover mobility system and sample acquisition system planned to explore Mars and acquire samples that will be returned to Earth.

Rocket: Soyuz-FG; Payload: Soyuz MS-11; Date: 3 December 2018, 1131 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft was accurately placed on the target orbit for another mission to the International Space Station. This was the thirteenth Soyuz family mission in 2018, and the first crewed Soyuz launch after the anomaly on 11 October.

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: SSO-A: SmallSat Express (64 small satellites); Date: 3 December 2018, 1834 UTC; Launch site: Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA. A series of six deployments occurred approximately 13 to 43 minutes after lift-off, after which launch customer Spaceflight began to command its own deployment sequences.