Satellite News

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) said it is currently in advanced stages of development of an innovative communications satellite named Amos-E which has a mass of about half the mass of other communications satellites in the market today.

NASA and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California, have received confirmation the Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD) CubeSat spacecraft is in orbit and operational. OCSD launched aboard an Atlas V rocket on 8 October from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Manufacturing and assembly of the spacecraft structure that will take NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was successfully completed at Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Redondo Beach facility.

Chinese media provided some details regarding the recently launched three CubeSats, which are expected to help track civil aircraft and ships.

Ball Aerospace, prime contractor for NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM), has integrated the propulsion subsystem onto the BCP-100 spacecraft bus and begun system performance and environmental testing as the project heads toward a 2016 launch date.

ESA and EUMETSAT have signed a cooperation agreement that secures the continued development of the MetOp Second Generation satellites, which will start providing meteorological observations from polar orbit in mid-2021.

Airbus Defence and Space has successfully completed the final integration and testing of Arabsat 6B (Badr-7) for which it is co-prime industrial contractor. The satellite today left the Airbus Defence and Space facilities in Toulouse, France, and will now be transported by air to Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite is due to be launched in the upcoming weeks by an Ariane 5 launcher.

NASA has selected five science investigations for refinement during the next year as a first step in choosing one or two missions for flight opportunities as early as 2020. The submitted proposals would study Venus, near-Earth objects and a variety of asteroids.