Satellite News

Skybox Imaging (Skybox), an emerging provider of timely satellite imagery and data services, announced it is adding an imaging satellite, SkySat-2, to its fleet during 2013 via a newly available secondary launch opportunity aboard a Soyuz-Fregat.

The BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) Mechanical and Propulsion Bus (MPB) Proto-Flight Model (PFM) has been baked out in the Phenix thermal vacuum facility at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. This process involved heating the MPB to 60 degrees C in a vacuum for 20 days to remove any contaminants that would outgas in space.

Electric rocket engines known as Hall thrusters, which use a high-velocity stream of ions to propel a spacecraft in space, have been used successfully onboard many missions for half a century. Erosion of the discharge channels walls, however, has limited their application to the inner solar system. A research team at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has found a way to effectively control this erosion by shaping the engine’s magnetic field in a way that shields the walls from ion bombardment.

Lockheed Martin’s (LMT) second-generation Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system achieved its first intercept using tracking information from the space tracking and surveillance system demonstration satellites during a Missile Defense Agency (MDA) test.

Boeing will continue modernising the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite constellation for up to five more years, extending the company’s role in the navigation network.

Comtech Telecommunications Corp. announced that its Santa Clara, California-based subsidiary, Comtech Xicom Technology Inc., received a US$4.4 million order from a domestic integrator for Traveling Wave Tube Amplifiers for a U.S. Government Satellite Communications application.

Lockheed Martin has completed the assembly of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. The orbiter is now undergoing environmental testing at the company’s Space Systems facilities, near Denver, Colorado. MAVEN is the next mission to Mars and will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.

A UK mission, jointly developed by the University of Surrey’s Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), to send the world’s first smartphone satellite into orbit, is due to launch on 25 February.