Satellite News

3 April saw the first in a week of manoeuvres that will take Meteosat-7 to its ultimate resting place in graveyard orbit, about 300km above the geostationary ring.

Space Systems Loral (SSL) announced that it successfully completed the Systems Requirements Review (SRR) for the Restore-L project to demonstrate satellite servicing in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

On 26 April, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make the first in a series of dives through the 2,400-kilometer wide gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission’s grand finale.

Astro Aerospace, a Northrop Grumman business, has been selected by Airbus Defence and Space to provide the nine meter L-band mesh reflectors for two Inmarsat 6 satellites.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. has received an Authorisation To Proceed from The Boeing Company for the provision of three Ku-Band communication subsystems that will replace ageing Ku-Band communication subsystems.

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the James Webb Space Telescope team completed the acoustic and vibration portions of environmental testing on the telescope.

The CanX-7 nanosatellite built by Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) has validated real-time detection and tracking of aircraft by satellite in low-Earth orbit. The next mission phase will begin in early May with deployment of drag sails developed by SFL to accelerate the deorbiting of small satellites as a practical solution to the space debris problem.

Aireon announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with Spanish Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) ENAIRE. Through this agreement, ENAIRE will begin investigating the benefits of deploying space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) technology in its airspace.