Satellite News

NASA will test non-toxic fuel and compatible propulsion system in space for the first time with the Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM), set to launch later this month on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

NanoAvionics, an international nano-satellite missions integrator, and the consortium partners KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) and Antwerp Space have been awarded EUR10 million funding by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020, ESA’s ARTES and private investors.

Building on its existing presence in Australia, Viasat Inc. announced its plans to launch a Real-Time Earth (RTE) facility in Alice Springs, Australia.

Specialists of the Roskosmos enterprises completed the general assembly of a Proton-M integrated launch vehicle at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Europe’s Ariane 6 launch vehicle is set to debut with a commercial mission in 2020 – industry is carrying out the final tests and starting production. The Ariane 6 launch zone at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is near completion.

China’s BeiDou-3 navigation satellite system is expected to be completed in 2020, with a total of 35 satellites, researchers at a conference on the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) said.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) have been co-operating under the KiboCUBE programme launched in 2015 to provide opportunities to deploy CubeSats from the Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” of the International Space Station (ISS).

The U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF-5) communication satellite was encapsulated on 5 June at Astrotech Space Operations processing facility in Florida.