Satellite News

Boeing’s first all-electric propulsion satellite, the 702 Small Platform (702SP), has passed its Critical Design Review, allowing the new program to move two satellites into assembly, integration and testing.

Inmarsat has announced that Alphasat has reached its temporary post in geostationary orbit. Alphasat was launched on an Ariane 5 ECA launcher from French Guiana on 25 July.

Lockheed Martin delivered NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft to the Kennedy Space Center, on 2 August. The orbiter will now undergo three-and-a-half months of final processing in preparation for a November launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-401 rocket.

The Kepler team has continued exploratory recovery testing of Reaction Wheel 4 (RW4). On 25 July 2013, the wheel spun in both directions in response to commands.

A Lockheed Martin team has completed and passed the full range of environmental tests – electrical, mechanical and thermal – for the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument that will make crucial solar measurements when it flies on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellite mission, known as GOES-R.

Inmarsat’s Alphasat I-4A F4 satellite has achieved a major milestone with the successful deployment of its solar arrays. The spacecraft has now reached geosynchronous orbit and is drawing power from the Sun.

India’s advanced weather satellite INSAT-3D, launched in the early hours of 26 July 2013 from Kourou, French Guiana, has successfully been placed in geosynchronous orbit after three orbit raising manoeuvres commanded from ISRO’s Master Control Facility at Hassan.

Astrium has been awarded a contract by global satellite operator Telesat to build the latest addition to Telesat’s fleet of communications satellites. This satellite will use Astrium’s Eurostar E3000 platform.