Satellite News

According to SES, the anomaly that caused the total loss of Astra 5A (formerly Sirius 2) was unrelated to the outage the satellite suffered in October 2008.

SES Astra announced that its satellite Astra 5A, the former Sirius 2 operating at 31.5 degrees East, experienced a technical anomaly leading to the end of the spacecraft’s mission.

The leak in one of the weather satellite’s thrusters is actually the same one that was detected about a year ago.

The geostationary U.S. weather satellite GOES 12 is struggling with a thruster leak and as a consequence suffered an outage.

Nigerian and Chinese officials have reportedly opened talks on a replacement satellite for NigComSat 1, a Nigerian newspaper reported.
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Recent observations suggest that the failed DSP 23 early warning satellite may actually be completely dead. In related news, one affected satellite operator said the U.S. military did not warn it when the defunct spacecraft approached its own satellite.
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Over the past few weeks, three geostationary satellites suddenly went out of control and started drifting slowly, theoretically posing the risk of a collision with operational satellites in the same orbit. The most problematic of these errant satellites is DSP 23 (a.k.a. USA 197), a Reuters report suggests.

Control of Kazakhstan’s first telecommunication satellite, KazSat 1, has been lost again – this time possibly forever.