Satellite News

European Space Propulsion (ESP), a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne, was awarded a contract valued at approximately EUR11 million from the European Space Agency (ESA) for the flight qualification of the 5-kilowatt XR-5E Hall Thruster.

Two unfurlable mesh antenna reflectors developed by Harris Corporation have successfully deployed onboard the third Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin . This represents the fifth and sixth successful Harris reflector deployments in the planned five-satellite MUOS system.

Harris Corporation has been selected by Thales to provide a new advanced space antenna reflector that is half the mass of competing antennas, is impervious to vibration during launch, and reduces shadows that can block solar arrays on satellites.

Airbus Defence and Space announced the forthcoming move of its Skynet 5A satellite. The move of Skynet 5A will enable delivery of protected and secure satcom services in the new coverage footprint from mid-2015.

The sixth Galileo satellite of Europe’s navigation system has now entered its corrected target orbit, which will allow detailed testing to assess the performance of its navigation payload.

Solar Orbiter’s STM will leave Airbus Defence and Space in UK on 23 March., to be delivered to IABG, near Munich in Germany, for mechanical testing. This is an important step in the verification phase of the project. Scheduled to be launched in 2018, the Solar Orbiter mission will study how our Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, the bubble of space filled with particles and fields in which the Earth orbits.

European Space Propulsion (ESP), a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne, recently received a contract from Airbus Space and Defence and Thales Alenia Space for the development of a new ThermoThrottle to provide variable Xenon Flow Control (XFC) for the ESP XR-5E Hall Thruster, the European version of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Zero-Erosion Hall Effect Thruster.

Lockheed Martin has expanded its vibration measurement capabilities for testing satellite systems, with a 450-channel PULSE vibro-acoustic data acquisition system.