Satellite News

Intelsat S.A. updated the in-service date for the Intelsat 33e satellite, successfully launched on 24 August 2016. The in-service date is being adjusted from fourth quarter 2016 to first quarter 2017.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the company’s launchpad rocket incident on 1 September is proving to be “the most difficult and complex failure” it has ever encountered.

Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, are assessing two power system-related anomalies affecting the operation of NASA’s ISS-RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station. RapidScat measures surface wind speeds and directions over the ocean.

Israel’s Space Communication Ltd said it could seek US$50 million or a free flight from SpaceX after the Amos-6 communications satellite was destroyed last week aboard during a test of a Falcon 9 launcher.

The launch for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission remains on track for 8 September. Initial assessments indicate the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and OSIRIS-REx spacecraft are healthy and secure in the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex-41, 1.8 km from the SLC-40 pad where a SpaceX Falcon 9 disintegrated yesterday. Otherwise, there’s little news regarding the cause and the effects of the Falcon 9 mishap. Sometimes it seems, though, that the wrong questions are being asked.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded on the launch pad during preparations for a routine static fire test. Nobody was injured, however the rocket’s payload, Space-Communication’s Amos 6 satellite, was destroyed.

There is growing speculation that the launch of the Gaofen-10 remote sensing satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China aboard a Chang Zheng-4C has failed. Lift-off was scheduled for 31 August at around 1850 UTC. There has been no official confirmation so far.

Evaluation of the fifth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite determined that the satellite experienced a failure of the orbit raising propulsion system during a transfer manoeuvre on 29 June, a spokesman for the Naval Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command said. It is the second failure of a Lockheed-Martin-built military satellite within a few weeks.