Satellite News

The Norwegian Space Agency (NOSA) has awarded a contract to Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) to build the NorSat-4 maritime tracking microsatellite. NorSat-4 will be the eighth satellite developed by SFL for Norway, including NorSat-3 launched in April 2021 and the NorSat Technology Demonstrator (NorSat-TD) now under construction.

Aitech, a provider of rugged board and system level solutions for military, aerospace and space applications, has announced that its mission-critical, space rated flight computers will enable communications technologies onboard the second production block of small satellites being developed by Astranis.

SEAKR Engineering, Inc. (SEAKR) announced operational success of next generation commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) processing hardware as part of a risk reduction technology demonstration supporting the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Blackjack Program.

Maxar Technologies announced the company will manufacture a new geostationary communications satellite for longtime customer SiriusXM. The SXM-9 satellite will be based on Maxar’s proven 1300-class platform and built at the company’s manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, California. It is expected that SXM-9 will launch in 2024.

Maxar Technologies announced another delay to the launch of its next-generation imagery satellites. “We have decided to delay the launch from the fourth quarter of 2021 into next year,” Maxar CEO Dan Jablonsky was quoted as saying.

Northrop Grumman Corporation and Ball Aerospace successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) Geosynchronous (GEO) mission payload.

Solar Orbiter and BepiColombo are set to perform two Venus flybys just 33 hours apart on 9 and 10 August. The two spacecraft need the gravitational swingby to help them lose a little orbital energy in order to reach their destinations towards the centre of the Solar System.

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