Satellite News

MetOp, the first in the new European series of operational meteorological satellites in polar orbit, is now scheduled for launch aboard a Soyuz 2.1.b on 7 October 2006.

Rocket: Proton M/Briz M; Payload: Hotbird 8; Date: 4 August 2006, 2148 UTC; Launch Site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The successful mission lasted 9 hours and 11 minutes before Hotbird 8 was released into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The launch was delayed more than two months because of the previous Briz M failure that caused the loss of Arabsat 4A.

Russia plans to launch the European MetOp-1 weather satellite in early autumn 2006, according to Roskosmos.

The NASA Wallops Flight Facility has been selected by the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Detachment 12 as the launch site for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s TacSat 2 satellite. The launch is scheduled for 13 November 2006.

Alliant Techsystems has received a US$90 million contract to provide first, second, and third stage Orion solid rocket motors to Orbital Sciences Corporation for use in a variety of launch platforms including the Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) programme.

AirLaunch announced that its industry-U.S. government team has dropped successfully a 32-metric ton rocket from a C-17 cargo aircraft. The rocket, a full-scale simulated AirLaunch QuickReach, was the largest single object to be dropped from a C-17 as part of the DARPA/Air Force Falcon Small Launch Vehicle Program.

The number one winner NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration programme is SpaceX, which will receive US$278 million. Number two, Rocketplane Kistler (RpK), has won a US$207 million award.

Rocket: Rokot; Payload: KOMPSAT-2 [Arirang-2]; Date: 28 July 2006, 0705 UTC; Launch Site: Plesetsk, Russia. The launch vehicle deployed the Earth observation satellite of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) into a Sun-synchronous orbit of 685 km altitude.