Satellite News

NASA’s science mission to retrieve a sample from an ancient space rock has moved closer to fruition. The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has passed a critical milestone in its path towards launch and is officially authorised to transition into its next phase.

The Ball Aerospace air quality sensor being built for the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) under South Korea’s National Institute of Environmental Research in the Ministry of Environment has passed a major milestone toward its launch.

Ad Astra Rocket Company has been selected by NASA as one of the winners of the space agency’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) competitive solicitation, which opened in November of 2014.

The Innovative Technology Partnerships Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, announced the release of its core Flight System (cFS) Application Suite to the public.

QinetiQ has been awarded a contract worth EUR16 million over three years to develop the computer and avionics for the European Space Agency’s Proba-3 satellite mission.

Russian Satellite Communication Company’s Ekspress-AM7, which was injected into a transfer orbit by a Proton-M/Briz-M on 18 March 2015 (UTC), reached geostationary orbit on 25 March 2015.

DirecTV 15, the most powerful U.S. broadcast satellite, has left Airbus Defence and Space’s cleanrooms in Toulouse (France). It will now be shipped to Kourou for launch by Ariane 5 in May 2015.

The team operating NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity learned last week that the long-lived rover experienced a brief amnesia event related to its flash memory, the first since a reformatting of that nonvolatile type of memory a week earlier.