Satellite News

Boeing has delivered the core stage of NASA’s first Space Launch System (SLS) deep space exploration rocket, moving it out of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the agency’s Pegasus barge.

Chinese state media said the recently launched Tongxin Jishu Shiyan Weixing 5 (TJSW-5) has entered a preset orbit. It will be used in communication, radio, television and data transmission, as well as to test high throughput technology.

NASA is opening an independent investigation with Boeing over a software glitch that prevented its Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner vessel from reaching the International Space Station in December, the agency said.

Thales Alenia Space to carry out a concept study concerning intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications using a Stratobus type platform to meet French army operational needs. Thales Alenia Space’s Stratobus is an autonomous stratospheric airship in the HAPS [High Altitude Platform System] category, operating from an altitude of 20 kilometers.

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: 60 Starlink satellites; Date: 7 January 2020, 0219 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The satellites were deployed at an altitude of 290 kilometers and will later engage their ion thrusters to reach an operational orbit of 550 kilometers.

Rocket: Chang Zheng 3B/G2; Payload: Tongxin Jishu Shiyan Weixing 5 (TJSW-5); Date: 7 January 2020, 1520 UTC; Launch site: Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China. The satellite was deployed into geostationary transfer orbit.

Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the signature of a launch services contract for the Euclid satellite – with the mission’s timeframe for lift-off starting in mid-2022 from the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana (South America).

Chinese space engineers have tested a micro propulsion technology on a recently launched satellite, which could be used in future space-based gravitational wave detection.