Satellite News

The U.S. Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation’s Information Systems sector the Enhanced Polar System Control and Planning Segment (EPS CAPS) contract.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. celebrated the completion of a US$75 million satellite manufacturing centre that more than doubles current spacecraft production capability.

NASA has joined the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

The BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) Mechanical and Propulsion Bus (MPB) Proto-Flight Model (PFM) arrived at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in December. It had travelled from the Stevenage (UK) facility of Astrium, where the propulsion subsystem and the heat pipes had been integrated.

ITT Exelis has been awarded a US$2.15 million contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to research the development of a small satellite navigation payload to augment the current Global Positioning System (GPS) programme.

The first switch-on of a Galileo search and rescue package shows it to be working well. Its activation begins a major expansion of the space-based Cospas-Sarsat network, which brings help to air and sea vessels in distress.

Arabsat has finalised the mission definition for Badr-7 (a.k.a. Arabsat-6B) and confirmed the in-orbit delivery contract to the consortium of Astrium and Thales Alenia Space, which has already started building the new satellite.

Meteosat-10 (formerly MSG-3) has replaced Meteosat-9 as EUMETSAT’s prime operational geostationary weather satellite after being moved to 0 degrees.