Satellite News

Rocket: Ariane 5 ECA; Payload: GSAT-11, GEO-KOMPSAT-2A; Date: 4 December 2018, 2037 UTC; Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana. In its final launch of 2018, Ariane 5 placed the satellites in geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).

RUAG Space has completed and passed a Manufacturing Readiness Review (MRR) for the Payload Fairing for United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V-500. This will be the first U.S.-made flight hardware by RUAG Space USA in Decatur, Alabama.

Rocket: Soyuz-FG; Payload: Soyuz MS-11; Date: 3 December 2018, 1131 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft was accurately placed on the target orbit for another mission to the International Space Station. This was the thirteenth Soyuz family mission in 2018, and the first crewed Soyuz launch after the anomaly on 11 October.

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: SSO-A: SmallSat Express (64 small satellites); Date: 3 December 2018, 1834 UTC; Launch site: Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA. A series of six deployments occurred approximately 13 to 43 minutes after lift-off, after which launch customer Spaceflight began to command its own deployment sequences.

Arianespace has been chosen by the Slovenian Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies (SPACE-SI) to launch the NEMO-HD microsat on the Vega launch vehicle as part of the Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) Proof of Concept (POC) flight in 2019.

Rocket: Rokot/Briz-KM; Payload: three Rodnik satellites; Date: 29 November 2018, 0227 UTC; Launch site: Plesetsk, Russia. The Briz-KM upper stage together with three military satellites separated from the rocket’s second stage as scheduled at 0233 UTC.

Arianespace’s next Ariane 5 flight has been authorised for lift-off on 4 December following a launch readiness review conducted at the Spaceport in French Guiana.

South Korea has launched a single-stage rocket to test a locally made engine as part of efforts to place a satellite into orbit.