Satellite News

Boeing said will lead a team of suppliers in pursuit of a contract for production of the upper stage for the Ares I crew launch vehicle, NASA’s first new human-rated launch vehicle since the space shuttle.

A new date has been scheduled for the upcoming Dnepr cluster launch.

Delays are nothing unusual in the space industry, but this one may have the potential for a new record. The first test flight of Russia’s yet-to-be-developed Angara rocket has been postponed to 2011, at least ten years later than originally planned.

The launch of a Dnepr rocket from Baikonur with a cluster of small satellites may be postponed until mid-April, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency said.

Sea Launch said it has set a goal of returning to flight in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Jules Verne, the first of five Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), is 100 percent assembled and ready to fly. Launch aboard an Ariane 5 has slipped back from July to no earlier than September owing to several factors.

Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said the company was “committed to supporting the future evolution of the mobile satellite services (MSS) industry, offering reliable access to space on its heavy-lift Ariane 5 and medium-weight Soyuz launch vehicles.” There’s a snag, though: the Ariane 5 can’t loft these birds on a dual launch.

Sea Launch has entered into an agreement with SES to use the Land Launch vehicle, initially slated to launch the AMC-21 communications satellite, for the launch of another, yet to be determined, satellite of the SES group, planned in the mid-2009 time-frame.