Satellite News

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. announced the release of quantumCMD, a lightweight, portable command and control (C2) system designed specifically for small satellite missions. quantumCMD consolidates Telemetry, Tracking and Command functions in a single off-the-shelf product.

NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has tweaked its orbit to help scientists make the first systematic observations of how morning fogs, clouds and surface frost develop in different seasons on the Red Planet.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been awarded a US$5.8 million contract from the Defense Weather System Directorate at the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, California, for the production of the Ion Velocity Meter (IVM) under the U.S. Air Force Space Situational Awareness Environmental Monitoring programme to fly aboard COSMIC-2, the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate-2 (aka Formosat-7).

Space Systems/Loral (SSL) was awarded a contract by Skybox Imaging to build an advanced constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for Earth imaging.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the National Center of Space Studies of France (CNES), signed an implementing agreement Monday for co-operation on a future NASA Mars lander called the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) mission.

Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, India’s first interplanetary probe, completes 100 days in space tomorrow (12 February 2014). The spacecraft and its instruments are healthy.

A Proton M launch vehicle is to launch Turksat-4A on 14 February 2013, 2109 UTC, from Pad 24 at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. It will be the first ILS launch of 2014.

ISS-Reshetnev Company has commenced mating the platform and the payload module of the telecommunications satellite Ekspress-AM8.