Satellite News

By the end of 2020, Russia’s state space corporation Roskosmos will sign a contract to design the Nuklon space complex, which includes a space tug fitted with a nuclear reactor, said Alexander Bloshenko, the director of advanced programmes and science at Roskosmos.

ESA has awarded a EUR129.4 million contract covering the detailed design, manufacturing and testing of Hera, the Agency’s first mission for planetary defence. This ambitious mission will be Europe’s contribution to an international asteroid deflection effort, set to perform sustained exploration of a double asteroid system. The contract has been awarded to a consortium led by prime contractor OHB System AG in Bremen.

Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) has been selected to provide the science payloads for the two Janus spacecraft. Last week, Janus was approved by NASA to proceed with final design of the mission hardware, including the MSSS cameras (called “JCam”).

EUMETSAT and the other European and U.S. partners of the Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 programme have confirmed readiness of all systems and teams for the launch and operations of the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite.

The University of Colorado Boulder and Lockheed Martin will soon lead a new space mission to capture the first-ever closeup look at a mysterious class of solar system objects: binary asteroids.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has successfully demonstrated GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) from its 18-kg DoT-1 satellite.

A laser assembly for spacecraft that is capable of displaying advertising from space has passed stratospheric tests, according to the developer, Avant Space.

The U.S. Space Force has declared Initial Operational Capability of the Electro-optical Infrared Weather System Geostationary (EWS-G1) spacecraft. EWS-G1, formerly known as GOES-13, was transferred to the U.S. Air Force by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2019 under an agreement between the U.S. Air Force and NOAA for Interagency Cooperation on Collection of Space-Based Environmental Monitoring Data.