Satellite News

The SCARBO (Space CARBon Observatory) project for improved measurement of greenhouse gases has been officially kicked off. It is funded by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 Programme and will be implemented by a consortium of seven European organisations led by Airbus.

Phase Four, a provider of electric radio frequency (RF) thrusters for in-space propulsion, announced that NASA has purchased one of Phase Four’s second-generation RF thrusters to vet its capabilities for small satellite propulsion.

Orbital ATK announced that the “S.S. J.R. Thompson” Cygnus spacecraft successfully completed its rendezvous and berthing manoeuvres with the International Space Station.

Aerojet Rocketdyne successfully completed hot-fire testing of a new in-space engine, designated ISE-100.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded Teledyne e2v, a division of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, with the second phase of a EUR42 million contract to produce high-end Charge Coupled Device (CCD) visible light image sensors for the PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission.

The recently launched GOES-17 weather satellite has a serious cooling problem that could affect the quality of its pictures. The satellite’s primary weather-monitoring instrument — the Advanced Baseline Imager — is not performing to specifications for about six hours each day.

NASA has awarded a contract to Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colorado, for the primary instrument components for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

A collaboration between Analytical Graphics Inc. (AGI) and Thoth Technology brings the 46-meter radio astronomy antenna at the Algonquin Radio Observatory (ARO) to the commercial space situational awareness (SSA) market.