Satellite News

The latest announcements by ProtoStar could mean the upstart satellite operator has more problems than originally thought. Most notably, the Singaporean government has withdrawn its support. Using a slot provided by Intersputnik instead may not be as easy as claimed, ProtoStar competitor AsiaSat said.

At a congressional hearing, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said that “not too far from now we will have used the last kilogram of Plutonium-238, and if we want more Plutonium-238, we’ll have to buy it from Russia.” This has been known for years, but nonetheless Dr. Griffin’s remarks were widely reported and commented by news media.

Now that the wayward NRO-L21 spy (USA 193) satellite has been shot down (or rather blown into smithereens): which spacecraft is next? This question is not as frivolous and far-fetched as it may seem at first glance.

Laurier (Larry) Boisvert surprisingly resigned as head of the Canadian Space Agency only nine months after taking over the job. There is speculation the move could be related to the recently announced sale of MDA’s space business, which includes Radarsat 2, to ATK of the USA.

The proposal by OHB and SSTL to set up “Galileo Light” is mainly a signal aimed at European politicians, which already can be deducted from the fact that it was announced in Brussels — not in Guildford or Bremen. But will they listen?

The deadline has passed, the required miracle apparently did not happen, and the planned European navigation satellite system Galileo now faces the biggest hurdle in its history–which so far hadn’t been a smooth ride anyway. The private consortium charged with developing Galileo has failed to provide an adequate response for getting the project back on track, the European Commission said.

News agencies were fast over the weekend to report claims by Iranian state TV that the country had launched a satellite aboard an indigenous rocket. Not much later, Iranian officials said it was just a suborbital launch of a sounding rocket. But now it looks as though there has been no launch at all.

A report by U.S. news agency UPI over the weekend claimed that “U.S. and Russian officials changed the International Space Station’s orbit to keep it clear of debris from a satellite destroyed by China.” This has turned out to be completely untrue. — In related news, the number of fragments stemming from the Chinese ASAT test is still rising and may reach a record number.