Satellite News

Orbital Sciences Corp. will launch its next mission to resupply the International Space Station on Monday, 27 October.

New reports suggest that the recent launch of Ekspress AM6 aboard a Proton M/Briz M was not as successful as officially announced, and that the achieved orbit was below specifications. However, the satellite is still expected to be able to reach its final orbit.

The Ekspress-AM6 telecommunications satellite, designed and built by ISS-Reshetnev Company, was successfully launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on 21 October 2014.

Rocket: Proton M/Briz M; Payload: Ekspress-AM6; Date: 21 October 2014, 1509 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Payload separation from the upper stage was to occur approx. nine hours after lift-off [too late for this issue].

Rocket: Chang Zheng 4C; Payload: Yaogan 22; Date: 20 October 2014, 0631 UTC; Launch site: Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China. The satellite was put into a 1196 km x 1208 km x 100 degrees solar-synchronous orbit.

The U.S. military landed its X-37B robotic space plane at Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California on Friday, ending a classified 22-month mission that marked the third in Earth orbit for the experimental programme, the U.S. Air Force said.

Boeing has successfully completed the final milestone of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreement with NASA. The work and testing completed under the agreement resulted in significant maturation of Boeing’s crew transportation system, including the CST-100 spacecraft and Atlas V rocket.

Rocket: Ariane 5 ECA; Payload: Intelsat 30 (ISDLA-1), ARSAT 1; Date: 16 October 2014, 2143 UTC; Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana. Both spacecraft were successfully deployed into geostationary transfer orbits.