Satellite News

Arabsat will discuss its plans to manufacture and launch four new satellites on Arabsat orbital positions and Hellas-Sat orbital positions, when it convenes the 147th Board of Directors’ meetings in Dubai between 5 and 6 November.

Russian Satellite Communications Company said in a brief statement that it will take the recently launched Ekspress-AM6 seven months to become operational, almost twice the time originally expected.

China’s experimental spacecraft, designed to fly around the moon and back to Earth, entered lunar orbit on Monday and is making necessary preparations for its trip back home.

The recently launched Ekspress AM6 has in fact been deployed into a lower-than-planned orbit following an underperformance of the launcher’s Briz M upper stage.

MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory conducted the third of four manoeuvres to raise the spacecraft’s minimum altitude sufficiently to extend orbital operations and delay the probe’s inevitable impact onto Mercury’s surface until early next spring.

NASA has awarded a sole source contract modification to Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, of Azusa, California, for the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) Instrument for flight on the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2) mission.

Intelsat General Corp. (IGC) said it is one of four companies awarded a contract by the United States Air Force (USAF) to study the viability of using commercial facilities and operations expertise for the tracking, telemetry and command (TT&C) of government satellites.

Aerojet Rocketdyne recently received a contract from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to supply the thrusters that would help land the next rover on Mars after it is launched in 2020.