Satellite News

The Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. planet hunting Kepler Mission completed five years of operations since its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on 6 March 2009.

NASA’s Opportunity team celebrated the Mars Exploration Rover’s 10th anniversary on Mars.

Spacebel informed me that the company “signed the FINAL Contract with VAST for the supply of VNREDSat-1b (and not a pre-contract agreement as mentioned in your article). SPACEBEL is prime of the Belgian consortium.”

Seven years after China’s anti satellite test, 90 percent of the resulting debris is still in orbit, according to NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) Directorate celebrated the 20th Anniversary of achieving Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for GPS last month.

Astrium said it was celebrating more than 500 years of combined operation in orbit clocked up by its highly successful series of Eurostar satellites since their introduction in 1990.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first successful launch of the Centaur upper stage during the Ohio Aerospace Institute event on 22 November. Centaur was recognised as the hallmark of innovative design and engineering excellence.

The Avionics 4000 equipping Thales Alenia Space’s entire Spacebus family of platforms, which was qualified in flight with the launch of the AMC-12 satellite on 3 February 2005, has now celebrated 100 years of cumulated service in orbit.