Satellite News

The 82nd meeting of the EUMETSAT Council took place in Darmstadt, Germany, on 26 November. The meeting achieved progress in the approval process for the EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS-SG) programme.

The health of the IRNSS 1C navigation satellite launched last month by India is normal, according to Indian Space Research Organisation.

Russia’s Spektr-UV spacecraft [also known as Spektr-UF, Spektr-F and World Space Observatory-Ultraviolet (WSO-UV)], will reportedly not be launched before 2020 instead of 2016 as previously planned, partly because of restrictions on U.S.-made parts.

After ground testing and careful review over two days, MAVEN was successfully brought out of Safehold Mode the afternoon of Friday, 21 November. The spacecraft is operating nominally in Earth-Point Mode with high-rate communications.

RedEye, a Stratasys company and provider of 3D printing and additive manufacturing services, has partnered with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to 3D print 30 antenna array supports for the FORMOSAT-7 Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC-2) satellite mission.

Intended to effortlessly spin on-orbit at nearly 15 revolutions per minute collecting data, Northrop Grumman’s lightweight mesh reflector has been successfully installed on NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft and delivered to Vandenberg Air Force Base in preparation for launch in January 2015.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. said it is providing the phased array antennas and flight test cameras to prime contractor Lockheed Martin for Orion’s Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), which is an unmanned test flight scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on 4 December.

NASA’s MAVEN Mars orbiter went into safehold mode on Wednesday, 19 November. Safehold was triggered by a timing conflict between commands.