Satellite News

NASA has selected five U.S. aerospace companies to conduct concept studies for a potential future Mars orbiter mission. Such a mission would continue key capabilities including telecommunications and global high-resolution imaging.

After an extensive review process and passing a major development milestone, NASA is ready to proceed with final design and construction of its next Mars rover, currently targeted to launch in the summer of 2020 and arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021. [And yes, then there will finally be a microphone on the Martian surface.–Ed.]

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates has signed a four year contract with a ceiling of EUR31 million to provide Radarsat-2 information to the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).

Final preparations are underway at Lockheed Martin to ship DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-4 Earth imaging satellite to Vandenberg Air Force Base for a 15 September launch.

Marotta Controls announced that it has been awarded a contract from Airbus Defence and Space to provide high pressure Miniature Solenoid Valves for the Propulsion Modules of the MetOp Second Generation satellite constellation.

The Sentinel-3A satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space and dedicated to environmental monitoring and oceanography, was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia on 16 February 2016. It has just passed its in-orbit commissioning review (IOCR), showing that all functions are operating correctly and delivering the specified performance.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has resumed full operations, following work by engineers to investigate why the rover put itself into a safe standby mode on 2 July. The rover team brought Curiosity out of safe mode on 9 July.

China will launch a Water Cycle Observation Mission (WCOM) satellite around 2020, to help in forecasting hydrological events including flood and drought, it was announced at the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGRSS) 2016 in Beijing.