Satellite News

Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: SES-9; Date: 5 March 2016, 2335 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The satellite was placed into a 334 km x 40,648 km x 28.0 degrees supersynchronous geostationary transfer orbit 31 minutes after lift-off.

With less than two weeks until the launch of ExoMars 2016, preparations are proceeding well and the spacecraft composite has now been encapsulated within the launcher fairing at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch of SES-9 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was scrubbed on 1 March owing to high altitude winds. A new launch attempt is expected for 4 April.

Eutelsat 65 West A has been mated to Ariane 5 and encapsulated inside the launcher’s payload fairing, enabling final integration checkout to begin.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Blue Origin LLC entered into a public-private partnership with the U.S. Air Force to develop a new rocket propulsion system to power Vulcan — ULA’s next-generation launch system. The Air Force also awarded a separate development contract to an Aerojet Rocketdyne-ULA team for the AR1 engine.

The countdown for the SES-9 satellite launch aboard a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, was halted with only 1 minute, 40 seconds to go due to problems loading the liquid oxygen into the rocket, according to John Insprucker, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 product director.

SES S.A. announced that its SES-9 satellite is ready to be launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on 24 February (UTC) – too late for this issue. There is a 60% chance weather will co-operate for lift-off.

MEI Technologies, Inc. (MEIT) announced the successful deployment of two satellites – built by two Texas universities – from the International Space Station. This mission, named the Low Earth Orbiting Navigation Experiment for Spacecraft Testing Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking (LONESTAR) investigation, is comprised of Texas A&M University’s AggieSat4 satellite and University of Texas’ Bevo-2 satellite.