Satellite News

CNES has awarded Airbus Defence and Space a contract to design and build the optical instrument for MicroCarb, a microsatellite to map global carbon dioxide levels. After launch in 2020, the satellite will study carbon dioxide sources (which produce CO2) and sinks (which absorb it) to understand how this greenhouse gas is affecting climate change.

Boeing has completed, and delivered to storage, the last in a series of satellites for NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation.

The first human-rated expandable structure that may help inform the design of deep space habitats is set to be installed to the International Space Station on Saturday, 16 April.

On 4 March, Raytheon successfully passed the first formal qualification test milestone for the U.S. Air Force’s Global Positioning System Next Generation Operational Control System. Known simply as GPS OCX, this new system offers significant improvements to the GPS on which the U.S. military and millions of civilians rely, including enhanced availability, accuracy, and security.

Testing has started at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on a concept for a potentially revolutionary propulsion system that could send spacecraft to the edge of our solar system, the heliopause, faster than ever before.

Orbital ATK, Inc. announced that Intelsat, S.A. has signed a contract to become the first customer for Orbital ATK’s new satellite life extension service.

Airbus Defence and Space will supply its latest generation Solid State Recorder for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, slated for launch in 2020. The contract was recently signed between Airbus Defence and Space and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.