Satellite News

“Last Thursday I heard about the [LCROSS] probe the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sent to the moon in hopes of detecting a water source there. … It didn’t land nicely — the newscaster said it was the equivalent of an SUV hitting the moon at more than 5,000 miles per hour. … What if someone or something fired back? What if the moon has something comparable to the San Andreas fault? If the next probe hits such a fault, maybe half the moon will break off and all those pieces will be headed our way.” – Cindy Toopes (who apparently never asked herself why the moon is plastered with craters) in The Ottumwa Courier. This doesn’t seem to be a spoof like The Onion but a real newspaper in a real town in Iowa, USA.

“They have to visit their girlfriends on the bus now and not in official cars.” – Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin about a reduction of police cars’ fuel consumption after the installation of GLONASS tracking devices.
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“There is no such rocket designated with that number.” – A high-ranking ISRO official about PSLV-C13, according to IANS. The most recent PSLV, designated C14, was preceded by C12. The official reportedly declined to comment whether ISRO considered 13 an unlucky number.

“You take any other organisation in the country and compare it to ISRO and show me one which is more transparent than us. In fact, I think our problem is we talk too much. But we will not put out half-cooked data. I must also complain about the media. The media wants only sensation; they want only failures.” – ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair in response to the question whether ISRO needs to be more transparent. (Forbes India)

“Ball completes green testing for satellite” – Denver Post headline regarding the completion of environmental testing of the WorldView-2 satellite

“Our space control system has not registered the placement of the North Korean satellite into orbit. According to our data, it simply is not there.” — An unnamed high-ranking source with the Russian General Staff, according to Interfax.

“Great advertising … I’d say that was some of the best advertising I could have gotten, though I wouldn’t do that again if I could help it.” — Iridium CEO Matt Desch commenting the crash of one of his company’s satellites with Kosmos 2251

“We anticipated what would happen. We knew it was going to crash. We knew it was a risky business before we went into it, so, we decided to call for insurance, that is why we allowed the China Great Wall Insurance Company to be part of the project.” – Former Nigerian Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Turner Isoun, commenting the NigComSat 1 failure according to Vanguard.