Satellite News

Ball Aerospace has been selected by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to build and test a complete radiometric instrument on a Cubesat for a space mission under the In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) programme.

A laser-based mapping instrument has arrived at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver for integration onto NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.

Cobham recently received two awards totalling US$20.5 million to provide actuators for the Mars 2020 mission. NASA has again selected Cobham’s actuators to drive the rover wheels and provide steering motion, move the high-gain antenna and perform remote sensing mast deployment.

Thales Alenia Space has signed a EUR402 million contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to build the Copernicus Sentinel-1C and 1D environmental monitoring satellites, as part of Europe’s Copernicus programme.

Telesat announced that its new Telstar 12 VANTAGE satellite is now fully operational at 15 degrees West. Telstar 12 VANTAGE was launched by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on 24 November and is the first of a new generation of Telesat satellites with capacity optimised to serve the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly in demand by users.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed that the Asteroid Explorer “Hayabusa2” is cruising on its target orbit after measuring and calculating the post-Earth-swing-by orbit.

Thales Alenia Space has signed a contract with O3b Networks to deliver eight more satellites for their Medium Earth Orbit constellation.

After a year-long wait in storage for a Proton rocket to become available, the EDRS-A laser communications payload and its Eutelsat host satellite are finally at the Baikonur cosmodrome and being prepared for launch in late January.