Satellite News

Six people were injured when a train carrying space shuttle parts to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center derailed in Alabama, USA, yesterday. The train was carrying space shuttle reusable solid rocket motor segments from the ATK Launch Systems manufacturing site in Brigham City, Utah.

The inaugural flight of ISRO’s new Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark-III is now expected in 2009.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, along with its X-51A team members — U.S. Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA and Boeing — successfully demonstrated operation and performance of the X-1 scramjet engine in the first simulated flight at Mach 5 of the X-51A.

The U.S. Air Force is trying to persuade Boeing to offer commercial Delta IV launches again, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move is to help fill gaps among future government launches, the Journal cited unnamed Pentagon and industry officials.

Telesat has selected International Launch Services (ILS) for the launch of the Nimiq 5 satellite in 2009. Financial details were not released.

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that its Pegasus space launch vehicle delivered NASA’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) scientific satellite into its targeted orbit approximately 600 km above the Earth, inclined at 97.77 degrees to the equator.

Space Exploration Technology Corp. has been granted a five-year license to launch rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the U.S. Air Force said in a statement.

Rocket: Pegasus XL; Payload: AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere); Date: 25 April 2007, 2026 UTC; Launch Site: Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA. The spacecraft separated from the rocket 10 minutes, 20 seconds after ignition as planned.