Satellite News

Slated for launch in 2018, NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) will carry a 3D printed part made of polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), a material that has never been used in 3D manufacturing, let alone flown in space.

The first flight of NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), will carry 13 CubeSats to test innovative ideas along with an uncrewed Orion spacecraft in 2018, the agency said.

Europe’s ninth and tenth Galileo satellites have started broadcasting working navigation messages. These two satellites were launched together on 11 September last year.

Harris Corporation has announced that it will offer an all-digital navigation payload for GPS III Space Vehicles (SV) 11 and beyond.

Indra has been awarded the contract to expand the Hispasat ground segment for an amount of more than EUR5 million and an execution period extending until January 2017. The company will prepare the ground segment so that it can carry out the monitoring and control of the new Hispasat 1F and Amazonas 5 satellites.

Space Systems/Loral (SSL) announced it was awarded a contract by an undisclosed customer to build six satellites for an advanced constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for Earth imaging.

Raytheon Company has received a US$564 million contract modification award from NASA for two satellite sensors as part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Polar Follow-On missions.

Harris Corporation has received a US$316 million cost-plus-award-fee contract modification to build two payloads for the fourth and fifth weather satellites in the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) programme.