Satellite News

The Euclid mission is taking shape in Airbus cleanrooms: engineers are now finishing assembly of the telescope, the main instrument of the Payload Module, for which Airbus is responsible within this European Space Agency (ESA) mission led by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) as industrial prime contractor.

For the solar array of ESA’s JUICE mission to Jupiter, Airborne delivered the last four out of 10 XL substrate panels to Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands.

Rocket: Kuaizhou-1A [KZ-1A]; Payload: KL-ALPHA A, KL-ALPHA B [KL-a-A, KL-a-B]; Date: 17 November 2019, 1000 UTC; Launch site: Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China. State media reported that the two multimedia satellites were sent into planned orbit.

Nanoracks has booked a launch mission under the recently announced SpaceX rideshare programme. Onboard a Falcon 9, targeting launch in late 2020, Nanoracks has booked deployment of eight small satellites as well as the company’s first in-space Outpost-demonstration mission.

Kepler Communications and Cobham SATCOM have announced a strategic partnership aimed at eliminating barriers to widespread adoption of high capacity data services over Kepler’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) network.

On its fourth flight with Ariane 5 in 2019, Arianespace will orbit two telecommunications satellites on 22 November (UTC): TIBA-1 for Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space, on behalf of the Government of Egypt; and the GX5 satellite for the operator Inmarsat.

The JCSAT-18/Kacific1 communications satellite, built by Boeing, has arrived at SpaceX facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will be launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket to geostationary orbit.

Airbus space engineers are currently testing the Copernicus Sentinel-6A satellite at the Space Test Centre of Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (IABG) in Ottobrunn – near Munich – to prove its readiness for space. During the test campaign, which will last until spring 2020, the Airbus team will check that the satellite is able to survive the severe conditions of launch and the space environment.