Satellite News

Aerojet Rocketdyne said the company’s XR-5 Hall Thruster system aboard Al Yah 3 operated for more than 600 hours (over 25 days of firing) to propel the spacecraft to the intended orbit, which aided recovery from a launch insertion anomaly last January.

As the first Lockheed Martin-built GPS III satellite prepares to ship to the launch pad, the U.S. Air Force has declared that the second GPS III satellite is complete, fully tested and ready to launch.

NASA’s InSight spacecraft, en route to a 26 November landing on Mars, passed the halfway mark on 6 August. All of its instruments have been tested and are working well.

ISS-Reshetnev Company has won a contract to build two new telecommunications satellites, Ekspress-AMU3 and Ekspress-AMU7.

Engineers have successfully tested the propulsion system of China’s planned space station lab capsules, a key step in its space station programme.

SSL announced that it was selected to help define next generation protected communications for the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center.

Frontier Aerospace Corporation announced their selection by NASA’s Space Technology and Mission Directorate (STMD) for a “Tipping Point” award to provide flight qualification of Frontier’s Deep Space Engine (DSE) that utilises MON-25/MMH propellant.

For Arianespace’s fifth launch of the year, and the first in 2018 with Vega, the company will orbit the Aeolus satellite – the world’s first space mission to acquire profiles of the Earth’s wind on a global scale, on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA).