Satellite News

Approximately two minutes after the Vega launcher’s lift-off from the Spaceport in French Guiana, a launcher anomaly occurred shortly after ignition of the Zefiro 23 second stage – leading to the premature end of the mission.

Rocket: Soyuz-2.1v/Volga; Payload: four military satellites [probably designated Kosmos 2535, 2536, 2537 and 2538]; Date: 10 July 2019, 1714 UTC; Launch site: Plesetsk, Russia. The successful separation of all four satellites was announced four hours later.

Spaceflight announced it is providing mission management and rideshare integration services on an upcoming launch from the International Space Station (ISS) and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus launch vehicle.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on 11 July (UTC) performed a series of operations for the second touchdown of Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2 on the Ryugu asteroid and the collection of its soil samples.

The mission critical design review (M-CDR) of NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space-based astrophysics observatory was recently completed at Ball Aerospace’s Boulder, Colorado, facility. The IXPE mission is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, with support from Ball Aerospace, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at University of Colorado Boulder and other partners.