Satellite News

Saft has been awarded a multi-million dollar Long Term Agreement (LTA) with Lockheed Martin as the preferred supplier of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries for the company’s telecommunications satellites.

Lockheed Martin has completed the assembly of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The spacecraft is now undergoing environmental testing at the company’s Space Systems facilities near Denver. OSIRIS-REx will be the first U.S. mission to return samples from an asteroid back to Earth.

Oxia Planum has been recommended as the primary candidate for the landing site of the ExoMars 2018 mission. ExoMars 2018, comprising a rover and surface platform, is the second of two missions making up the ExoMars programme, a joint endeavour between ESA and Russia’s Roskosmos. Launch is planned for May 2018, with touchdown on the Red Planet in January 2019.

The U.S. Air Force’s 3rd Space Operations Squadron accepted satellite control authority of the Wideband Global Satcom-7 satellite here 13 October following a three month launch and early orbit checkout period.

Space Systems/Loral (SSL) was selected to provide a communications satellite to Azercosmos, the national satellite operator of Azerbaijan. Under a strategic agreement with Intelsat, the satellite will be located at the 45 degrees east orbital location where it will provide service in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) has signed a satellite procurement contract with APT Satellite Company Limited (APT Satellite), a Hong Kong based satellite operator, for the Apstar-6C satellite programme, which is the second DFH-4 platform based communications satellite to be delivered by CGWIC to APT Satellite following Apstar-9.

Russia’s Federal Space Agency Roskosmos will propose a joint satellite system to India on Tuesday, a source from the agency said.

On 15 October 2015, a NASA mission broke its own record: the four satellites of its Magnetospheric Multiscale mission are now flying at their smallest separation, the tightest multi-spacecraft formation ever flown in orbit. The four spacecraft are just 10 km apart, flying in what’s called a tetrahedral formation, with each spacecraft at the tip of a four-sided pyramid. The close formation is all the more impressive as the spacecraft speed along at up to 24,000 km per hour and – with their booms extended – each spacecraft covers as much area as a professional baseball stadium.