Satellite News

Now that additional checks on the Ariane 5 ECA launcher have been completed, Arianespace and ESA have set the launch date of Herschel and Planck for Thursday, 14 May.

With the launch date of 9 September 2009 confirmed by Eurockot Launch Services, ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite has come out of storage at Thales Alenia Space’s facilities in Cannes, France.
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A U.S. Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket carrying the Air Force Research Laboratory’s TacSat-3 satellite and two secondary payloads, NASA’s PharmaSat microsatellite and NASA’s CubeSat Technology Demonstration experiments, is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on 6 May during a launch window beginning at 0000 UTC.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) said it successfully completed a rigorous qualification of its new Draco spacecraft thruster and Draco propulsion tank at the SpaceX Test Facility in McGregor, Texas/USA.

NASA is aiming to launch the final space shuttle mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope a day earlier than planned.

Rocket: Chang Zheng 2C; Payload: Yaogan 6; 22 April 2009, 0255 UTC; Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China. The remote sensing satellite was successfully placed into its target orbit, Chinese media reported.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. performed the second captive firing test (CFT) for the first stage flight model tank of the H-IIB Launch Vehicle on 22 April at the Tanegashima Space Center.

Russia’s Khrunichev Space Center said it continues to build Stage 1 for the South Korea’s first space launch vehicle, KSLV-1, which is to be launched in 2009 from Naro Space Center which is under construction on Oenaro Island.
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