Satellite News

SPOT 7, the Earth-observation satellite designed and built by Airbus Defence and Space, is commercially launched today, making its high-resolution imagery available to all users. In addition, Airbus Defence and Space established a new co-operation with the Azerbaijani satellite operator Azercosmos, for a joint use of the SPOT satellites.

Aerojet Rocketdyne announced its 100th geosynchronous satellite apogee insertion using its iridium/rhenium High Performance Apogee Thruster (HiPAT ), including first and second generation design configurations.

exactEarth Ltd. announced the successful integration of three advanced in-orbit AIS satellites into its exactView constellation through a contract under which exactEarth purchased one satellite and is acquiring data from two more under license.

The service module belonging to China’s unmanned lunar orbiter has reached the Earth-Moon second Lagrange Point (L2), the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said.

Lockheed Martin has completed thermal vacuum testing on the fourth satellite scheduled to launch and join the U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) constellation.

The operations team at ESOC is conducting manoeuvres to raise the pericentre of the Venus Express (VEX) orbit again, in an effort to keep the spacecraft in productive orbit around Venus.

The European Space Agency’s JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) mission has been given the green light to proceed to the next stage of development. This approval is a milestone for the mission, which aims to launch in 2022 to explore Jupiter and its potentially habitable icy moons.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) began regular provision of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 “Daichi-2″ (ALOS-2) observation data.