Satellite News

A Chinese delegation has proposed to Russia’s Roskosmos state space corporation to discuss a possibility of the creation of a joint global satellite communications system, which could become an analogue of the OneWeb satellite constellation.

Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. announced a collaborative project with Telesat for development of broadband communication technology using low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

Airbus has won two studies from the European Space Agency (ESA) to design a Sample Fetch Rover and an Earth Return Orbiter. These two elements will be critical parts of a mission to return samples of the planet Mars to Earth before the end of the next decade. NASA and ESA signed a letter of intent in April 2018 to pursue a Mars Sample Return mission.

Russia’s Roskosmos space corporation and its Chinese counterparts signed a number of agreements on space co-operation last month during a summit between Presidents Putin and Xi. The agreements followed a deal signed in March on Russian-Chinese co-operation in the exploration of the moon and outer space, and the creation of joint orbital groups.

The laser ranging interferometer (LRI) instrument has been successfully switched on aboard the recently launched twin U.S./German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites.

The Aerospace Corporation announced that it achieved first light on an infrared sensor suite named CubeSat Multispectral Observing System (CUMULOS), which was flown as a secondary payload on the Integrated Solar Array and Reflectarray Antenna (ISARA) CubeSat–a mission managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), operated by Aerospace, and sponsored by NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program.

Russia plans to launch the next-generation GLONASS-K2 satellite aboard a Soyuz-2 from the Plesetsk spaceport or aboard an Angara rocket from the Vostochny cosmodrome in 2022, later than originally planned, Information Satellite Systems CEO Nikolai Testoyedov was quoted as saying.

Airbus has completed the integration of Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite), the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first small mission satellite that will carry out an exciting scientific mission, to define the properties of the planets orbiting nearby stars.