Satellite News

NASA has awarded Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) wholly-owned subsidiary Orbital Technologies Corporation (ORBITEC) a competitive indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) task order contract to support the development, demonstration and verification of advanced propulsion system technologies under the Research and Technologies for Aerospace Propulsion Systems 2 (RTAPS2) for NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Orbcomm Inc. announced that SpaceX is planning to conduct the static fire of its Falcon 9 rocket on 16 December 2015, which will launch eleven next generation OG2 satellites as part of Orbcomm’s second and final OG2 Mission at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

SES S.A. announced that SES-9 has safely arrived at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is being processed for a mid-January 2016 launch on board SpaceX’s newly upgraded Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch of a Proton-M space rocket carrying a Garpun military satellite from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, originally scheduled for 10 December, has been postponed until 13 December for extra checks of the system that separates the satellite from the upper stage.

NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Series satellite-R (GOES-R) will now be launched in October 2016 aboard an Atlas V 541 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Orbital ATK, Inc. announced that the “S.S. Deke Slayton II” Cygnus spacecraft successfully completed its rendezvous and berthing procedures with the International Space Station (ISS). This is the company’s fourth successful berthing with the orbiting laboratory, and the third under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.

Rocket: Atlas V 401; Payload: OA-4 Cygnus; Date: 6 December 2015, 2144 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The mission, flown for Orbital ATK under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract, marks the first time the Cygnus has flown on an Atlas V rocket. The launch had been delayed for three consecutive days owing to bad weather.

Rocket: Soyuz 2.1v/Volga; Payload: Kanopus ST (Kosmos 2511), KYuA 1 (Kosmos 2512); Date: 5 December 2015; Launch site: Plesetsk, Russia. The launch appears to have been only partially successful as one of the satellites reportedly did not separate.