Satellite News

Operations in Point Rest State (PRS) have continued for NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. The spacecraft was placed in PRS on 15 May 2013, after the failure of reaction wheel 4. It has been 53 days since the spacecraft collected new science data.

The joint NASA and Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite was decommissioned this week following the loss of its last remaining transmitter.

A contract was signed today between Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and Mr. Amanzhol Jaimurzin, General Director of JV Ghalam LLP, for the collaborative design and development of the Kazakh Science and Technology satellite system. Ghalam LLP is a joint venture between JSC “National company Kazakhstan Garysh Sapary” (KGS) and EADS Astrium.

NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time.

After more than a year of planning and preparation, a team of Ad Astra engineers and physicists, along with NASA engineers participating as part of a technical interchange, completed the company’s first formal preliminary design review (PDR) of the VF-200 engine. The 200 kW “proto-flight” is the company’s first engine planned to be tested in space. The review was conducted on 26 June 2013 at Ad Astra’s research facility near Houston, Texas.

ITT Exelis has received a US$3.2 million contract from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. to design an advanced receiver chain for the U.S. Air Force Weather Satellite Follow-on (WSF) programme. The new design will improve measurements of ocean surface winds used for severe weather forecasting.

A NASA advanced ion propulsion engine has successfully operated for more than 48,000 hours, or 5 and a half years, making it the longest test duration of any type of space propulsion system demonstration project ever.

GeoMetWatch Corp announced it has entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA to provide four years of Earth observation and weather data from GeoMetWatch’s first Sounding and Tracking Observatory for Regional Meteorology (STORM) mission on board an Asia Satellite Telecommunications spacecraft.