Satellite News

The Meteor-M No 2-2 spacecraft has been delivered to the Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s Far East in preparation for the upcoming launch, the press service of the Center for operating ground-based space infrastructure facilities said.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced that its Orbital Test Bed (OTB) satellite has arrived at Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, to complete launch preparations in anticipation of launching the spacecraft as part of the U.S. Air Force’s Space Technology Program 2 (STP-2) flight on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA/Earth Observation Programs directorate) announced the signature of a launch services contract with a Vega launcher for SEOSat (Spanish Earth Observation SATellite) for Spain’s Center for Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI – Centro para el Desarrollo Technologico Industrial).

United Launch Alliance completed the system Critical Design Review (CDR) for the company’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket. The system-level CDR is the final review of the design for the overall rocket.

LandSpace, a private startup in Beijing, announced that its TQ-12 methane rocket engine successfully underwent a 20-second trial run at the company’s test facility in Huzhou, Zhejiang province. It is the world’s third high-performance methane engine after SpaceX’s Raptor and Blue Origin’s BE-4.

Rocket: Chang Zheng 3C; Payload: Beidou 2G8 (GEO-8); Date: 17 May 2019, 1548 UTC; Launch site: Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China. The satellite is the fourth BDS-2 backup satellite and the 45th satellite of the BDS satellite family.

A SpaceX launch already scrubbed once due to inclement weather was postponed again nearly 24 hours later on Thursday, this time for “about a week,” in order to update satellite software and “triple-check everything,” SpaceX said.

Earth to Sky, Inc. (ETS) announced the signing of a definitive launch services agreement with Delta Satellite Solutions, Inc. (DSS), a provider of payload and satellite integration services for academic institutions.