Satellite News

NASA is making final preparations to launch the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) aboard a Minotaur 5 at 0327 UTC on 7 September from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virgina.

Gaia, the most advanced space telescope ever built in Europe, has left the Toulouse facilities of Astrium after final integration and testing. Gaia is now en route to its launch site in French Guiana, where it will be prepared for launch aboard Soyuz.

ATK has shipped the primary mirror backplane support structure (PMBSS) for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to Marshall Space Flight Center. The highly engineered PMBSS is the backbone of the telescope, supporting the telescope’s beryllium mirrors, instruments and other elements.

Rocket: Dnepr (RS-20); Payload: KOMPSAT-5 (Arirang 5); Date: 22 August 2013, 1439 UTC; Launch site: Yasny, Russia. The satellite was injected into its target 550 km circular low Earth dawn-dusk orbit.

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that the slow progress of construction at Russia’s Vostochny cosmodrome amounted to “sabotage.”

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. announced that it has recently received a contract to support the Stratolaunch Air Launch Vehicle System programme, based in Huntsville, Alabama.

Eutelsat 25B/Es’hail 1 has been installed atop the SYLDA dispenser system, positioning this satellite for its ride as the upper passenger in Ariane 5′s payload “stack” for the 29 August Arianespace heavy-lift mission.

The launch of the GSLV-D5 scheduled for 1120 UTC on 19 August 2013 is called off, as a leak is observed in the UH25 fuel system of the liquid second stage during the pre-launch pressurisation phase on the vehicle just two hours before the scheduled lift-off.