Satellite News

The propulsion unit of the ExoMars lander module has passed firing tests, the Lavochkin Research and Production Association said in a statement.

A new machine-learning computer model accurately predicts damaging radiation storms caused by the Van Allen belts two days prior to the storm, the most advanced notice to date, according to a new paper in the journal Space Weather.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roskosmos has scheduled the first launch from the Vostochny spaceport in 2020 for the end of April, Roskosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said.

Swedish Space Corporation, SSC, and German space tech company Isar Aerospace have signed a long-term contract for testing of a new generation of European rocket engines for minilaunchers at Esrange Space Center in Sweden.

Quantum – the software-programmable satellite ordered by Eutelsat under an ESA Partnership Project – has successfully completed its mechanical test campaign at the Airbus facilities in Toulouse.

Telecommunications operator Orange will be the first telco to adopt O3b mPOWER, SES’s next-generation Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite communications system, to exponentially ramp up its consumer and business services, starting in the Central African Republic.

The launch of a Proton-M carrier rocket with the Ekspress-80 and Ekspress-103 communications satellites from Baikonur cosmodrome is scheduled for 31 March, the Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems Company said.

NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the agency’s Psyche mission. The Psyche mission currently is targeted to launch in July 2022 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.