Satellite News

The Canadian Department of National Defence has awarded a C$15 million contract to Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) for development of multipurpose microsatellites to support Arctic surveillance.

It’s been over a month since engineers have heard from the pair of briefcase-sized spacecraft known collectively as MarCO , which followed NASA’s InSight to the Red Planet. At this time, the mission team considers it unlikely they’ll be heard from again.

The Iridium NEXT constellation of satellites, developed and built by Thales Alenia Space, is now fully operational. Following eight successful launches between January 2017 and January 2019, a total of 75 Iridium NEXT satellites are now fully deployed in low Earth orbit (LEO). More specifically, the constellation operates with 66 satellites at an altitude of about 780 kilometers, distributed in six orbital planes of 11 satellites each, backed by nine in-orbit replacement satellites and six ground spares.

Rocket: Ariane 5 ECA; Payload: Saudi Geostationary Satellite 1/Hellas Sat 4, GSAT-31; Date: 5 February 2019, 2101 UTC; Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana. HS-4/SGS-1 was deployed into geostationary transfer orbit 27 minutes after lift-off, followed by GSAT-31 15 minutes later.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. announced that its Kratos RT Logic subsidiary successfully demonstrated the ability to roam among heterogeneous networks and optimise wideband satellite communications (SATCOM) with Enterprise Management and Control (M&C).

ArianeGroup said it just finalised the Definition Review of the Prometheus engine demonstrator with the support of the European Space Agency, CNES and DLR on 1 February 2019.

Russian State Space Corporation Roskosmos has finally approved the design of the Yenisei super-heavy class launch vehicle for future lunar missions, a Russian space industry source was quoted as saying by Sputnik.

Phase Four, a provider of electric radio frequency (RF) thrusters for in-space propulsion, announced that Capella Space, an aerospace and information services company providing Earth observation data on demand, has purchased six Maxwell engines for initial phase of constellation deployment, with an option to purchase additional Maxwell systems.