Satellite News

Thales Alenia Space announced that it will construct a powerful telecommunications condominium satellite, Inmarsat S – Europasat / Hellas-Sat 3, for Inmarsat and Hellas-Sat. The satellite will provide Mobile Satellite Services (MSS), Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) and Broadcast Satellite Services (BSS).

NASA and Lockheed Martin engineers have installed the largest heat shield ever constructed on the crew module of the agency’s Orion spacecraft. The work marks a major milestone on the path toward the spacecraft’s first launch in December.

QinetiQ Space has won a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) for the development of the International Berthing Docking Mechanism (IBDM), a unique soft docking system for use by spacecraft at the International Space Station (ISS).

ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission has undergone its latest major test:a ‘structural-thermal’ version of the craft’s sunshield was recently exposed to an artificial Sun for two weeks in Europe’s largest vacuum chamber at ESA’s Technical Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

The new Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite has been handed over to the Earth Science Mission Operations team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on 29 May, marking the end of a successful check-out period.

Lockheed Martin has won a US$915 million contract to develop a new ‘Space Fence’, beating out a bid from Raytheon.

Google is reportedly working on a satellite constellation of its own that is to provide Internet access to unconnected parts of the Earth. Technical details of the project, which is to cost at least US$1 billion, are scarce.

SES S.A. announced that the Astra 5B satellite went live today at the orbital position of 31.5 degrees East over Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.