Satellite News

ESA’s Swarm satellites will be able to determine their precise position in space thanks to GPS navigation receivers developed by RUAG Space specifically for use aboard satellites, the company said. Swarm will be equipped with the first examples of this new product line.

ISRO successfully performed the last of the five orbit-raising manoeuvre on its Mars Orbiter.

Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab recently set a new world record by producing a solar cell that converted 38.8% of solar energy into electricity, more than any other ground-based solar cell not using concentrated sunlight.

The new head of Russia’s federal space agency Roskosmos has requested that the country no longer buy telecommunications satellites from abroad because that money should go to the domestic industry,the Kommersant daily reported.

A day after suffering a glitch during the fourth orbit raising on its Mars Orbiter Mission, ISRO successfully completed a supplementary manoeuvre.

Close to 0000 UTC on 11 November, ESA’s GOCE satellite re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on a descending orbit pass that extended across Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica. As expected, the satellite disintegrated in the high atmosphere and no damage to property has been reported.

The fourth orbit-raising operation conducted on ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Spacecraft fell short of its goal as flow to the liquid engine stopped. It is expected that the problem can be overcome.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity experienced an unexpected software reboot (also known as a warm reset)on 7 November during a communications pass as it was sending engineering and science data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, for later downlinking to Earth.