Satellite News

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin US$395 million in contract options for the production of the ninth and tenth Global Positioning System III (GPS III) satellite.

Airbus Defence and Space and Neumann Space, an Australian Space technology company, have signed the very first agreement for a hosted payload aboard the new Bartolomeo platform of the International Space Station (ISS).

Harris Corporation’s fourth Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) has completed a pre-ship review with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA.

e2v has been awarded a contract by Leonardo-Finmeccanica for the supply of customised Charge Coupled Device (CCD) image sensors for their Multi-viewing, Multi-channel, Multi-polarisation Imager (3MI), an instrument for a series of weather and climate monitoring satellites.

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and Solar Junction Corporation (Solar Junction) are launching a new technology that will increase the efficiency of spacecraft solar array production and operation and lower the overall cost, the companies said.

Airbus Defence and Space has been commissioned by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) to develop and build three flight units of the METimage weather instruments. The partners have signed the EUR 291 million contract in Berlin.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has issued a request for proposal (RFP) seeking design, development and build of the robotic spacecraft that will capture a multi-ton asteroid boulder from deep space during the first segment of the agency’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). The RFP is open to the four industry partners that previously completed conceptual designs of the spacecraft.

The first GPS III satellite won’t be shipped until at least December because a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin failed to test onboard components. The satellite is already 28 months late because of other issues.