Satellite News

NASA’s Earth Observer-1 (EO-1) has reached its eighth anniversary on orbit. The EO-1 satellite, launched on 21 November 2000 had an initial design and mission life of one year, but has continued successful operations for more than seven years past the initial mission.

The International Space Station began operations ten years ago, on 20 November 1998, when the Russia-built Functional Cargo Block (named Zarya, Russian for “Dawn”) – the first ISS building component – was launched from Baikonur aboard a Proton rocket.

The second Earth resource satellite, CBERS-2, developed jointly by Brazil and China, has completed its five-years mission in orbit, the National Institute of Space Investigations of Brazil (INPE) said.

When the Lockheed Martin team returned to work on the NOAA-N Prime weather satellite on 6 September 2003, it looked just like when they left it: sitting on an adaptor plate that connected it to a turn-over cart (TOC). But something important was missing — 24 bolts that should have secured the the adaptor (and the spacecraft on it) to the cart.

North Korea on 31 August celebrated the tenth anniversary of what it claims was the launch of the first Kwangmyongsong (”Bright Star”) satellite aboard a Taepodong 1 rocket (which is pretty similar to the Safir 1 which recently did not launch an Iranian satellite).

The Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. operational altimeter satellite, GEOSAT Follow-On (GFO), has achieved 10 years of successful on orbit operation, providing continuous world-wide oceanographic data.
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The first of six Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman Corporation completed 25 years of successful on-orbit operations on 4 April.
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U.S. military officials said debris in space from the Chinese anti-satellite test a year ago will be problematic for at least a century. Since the test, at least two satellites had to be moved to avoid being hit by debris.