Satellite News

On 23 February 2018, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was brought out of safe mode, a precautionary standby status. The mission’s team is proceeding cautiously to restore the spacecraft to full service in coming days.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. announced that its subsidiary, Kratos RT Logic, delivered a virtual machine software satellite ground communications solution that commands the payload of the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) SATCOM satellites. Boeing’s Global SATCOM Configuration Control Element (GSCCE) Evolution programme chose Kratos’ virtual solution to replace an older command and control technology.

Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, this week lowered the orbit of the nearly 12-year-old CloudSat satellite following the loss of one of its reaction wheels, which control its orientation in orbit. While CloudSat’s science mission will continue, it will no longer fly as part of the Afternoon Constellation, or A-Train — six Earth-monitoring satellites that fly in a coordinated orbit.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter arrived at Mars in October 2016 in an initial, highly elliptical four-day orbit of about 98,000 x 200 km. Since March 2017, ESA had been conducting an aerobraking campaign, slowing the craft and lowering its orbit (to sometimes just 103 km altitude). At 1720 UTC on 20 February, ExoMars fired its thrusters for about 16 minutes to raise the closest approach to the surface to about 200 km, well out of the atmosphere.

Lockheed Martin has completed assembly on the Arabsat-6A satellite, which was recently shipped to its Sunnyvale, California facility to begin a comprehensive series of tests to ensure the satellite is ready for operations in orbit.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), at Mars since 2006, put itself into a precautionary standby mode on 15 February in response to sensing an unexpectedly low battery voltage.

Avanti Communications Group plc announced its HYLAS 4 satellite has arrived safely in French Guiana ahead of its March 2018 launch.

On 15 February at 1038 UTC the cargo transportation spacecraft Progress MS-08 successfully docked with the propulsion compartment of the Service Module Zvezda of the International Space Station (ISS).