Satellite News

NASA commercial cargo provider SpaceX is targeting Saturday, 28 August, to launch its 23rd commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying OneWeb communication satellites has been installed on the launch pad at Site 31 (Vostok) at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Russia’s Roskosmos state space agency said.

Two Soyuz-2 rockets have been sent from the Progress Space Rocket Center to the Baikonur spaceport and one of the carriers is set to deliver Russia’s new Prichal module to the International Space Station (ISS), the State Space Corporation Roskosmos announced.

China’s Chang Zheng-7 Y4 rocket, which will launch the new cargo craft of China’s space station, on Monday arrived at its launch site in southern China’s Hainan Province.

NASA and Boeing have decided to postpone the launch of Orbital Flight Test-2 to the International Space Station as teams continue work on the CST-100 Starliner propulsion system.

The next Arianespace mission is planned from Baikonur Cosmodrome with Soyuz on 19 August at 2223 UTC [0323 on 20 August local time], to deliver 34 satellites into orbit bringing the total OneWeb’s fleet to 288 satellites in Low Earth Orbit.

Rocket: Antares 230+; Payload: Cygnus (NG-16); Date: 10 August 201, 2201 UTC; Launch site: Wallops Flight Facility, USA. Cygnus is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station around 1010 UTC on 12 August.

Alba Orbital and Exolaunch announced a services agreement to launch sixteen PocketQube satellites as part of Exolaunch’s mission onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle at the end of 2021.