Satellite News

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has passed the second Integration Certification Milestone under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract.

Intelsat S.A. announced that Intelsat 33e, the second of the Intelsat EpicNG series of high throughput satellites (“HTS”), arrived at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, where it will undergo final preparations before its scheduled launch on an Ariane 5 rocket on 24 August 2016.

Cobham recently received an award from Northrop Grumman valued at approximately US$8 million for motion control technology for the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) instrument to be flown on the Joint Polar Satellite System 3 (JPSS-3) and 4 (JPSS-4) satellites.

Inmarsat announced that construction and associated sub-system tests of the satellite payload for its European Aviation Network (EAN) in-flight connectivity solution has been completed on schedule by Thales Alenia Space.

Space Systems Loral (SSL) has received US$20.7 million from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and build robotic arm flight hardware for the first phase of the agency’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) programme.

The launch of Superbird 8 may be be delayed by two years after the Japanese spacecraft was damaged during transportation to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has signed a contract with Honeywell to supply the VESTA satellite platform, a technology demonstration mission that will test a new two-way VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) payload for the exactEarth advanced maritime satellite constellation. The contract was signed as part of an MoU between Honeywell Aerospace and the UK Space Agency.

Following a successful NASA management review on 7 July, the Solar Probe Plus mission — which will send a spacecraft on several data-collecting runs through the Sun’s atmosphere — is moving into the system assembly, integration, test and launch stage of the project.