Satellite News

MDA announced that it has signed a contract valued at approximately C$4 million with Airbus for design studies dedicated to the optical data relay payload of the third SpaceDataHighway satellite.

Ball Aerospace delivered the TIRS-2 Flight Cryocooler for the Landsat 9 TIRS-2 instrument ahead of schedule to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Achieving this milestone early will allow GSFC additional time and options during the instrument integration and test phase.

Microsat Systems Canada Inc (“MSCI”) announced that they have selected MDA, a Maxar Technologies company, to provide the payload for a MSCI’s microsatellite based Synthetic Aperture Radar.

On 31 January NASA ended the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer’s (TES) almost 14-year operation. Launched in 2004 on NASA’s Aura spacecraft, TES was the first instrument designed to monitor ozone in the lowest layers of the atmosphere directly from space. Its high-resolution observations led to new measurements of atmospheric gases that have altered our understanding of the Earth system.

Designed for a contractual orbital life of 10 years, the Eutelsat 16C/SESAT telecommunications satellite has now been deorbited after 17 years and 10 months of operational service.

In order to help minimise early stage satellite mission failures, Infostellar has released a web-based LEOP (Launch and Early Orbit phase) support tool for amateur UHF satellites called StellarStation Amateur.

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a US$428.8 million contract to Northrop Grumman for two payloads for the Enhanced Polar System’s satellites.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus have signed a commercial partnership (PPP) agreement for construction, launch and operations of the commercial “Bartolomeo” platform. Airbus’ new external payload hosting facility will be attached to the European Columbus module of the International Space Station (ISS) from mid-2019.