Satellite News

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that it has signed a contract with International Relations and Accounting Center of The Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies (Ministry) of the Republic of Azerbaijan to design, build and deliver the AzerSpace-1/Africasat-1a commercial communications satellite.

An International Launch Services Proton M/Briz M rocket is to launch Arabsat’s Badr-5 communications satellite on 3 June, 2200 UTC.
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China is to launch a fourth Beidou (“Compass”) spacecraft as a part of its indigenous satellite navigation and positioning network.
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NASA engineers have begun building hardware for a new Landsat satellite instrument that helps monitor water consumption–an important capability in the U.S. West where precipitation is sparse and water rights are allocated–now that they have passed an independent review of the instrument’s design and integration and testing methods.

NOAA last month started shifting the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) -12 spacecraft from its previous GOES-EAST position, at 75 degrees West, to its new orbital location at 60 degrees West.

Lockheed Martin has delivered the first satellite in the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) programme to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where it will be prepared for a 30 July lift-off aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle.
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NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has ended operations after repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A new image transmitted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows signs of severe ice damage to the lander’s solar panels.
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Less than a month after its launch, satellite observers have managed to track the U.S. Air Force’2 X-37b Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-1).
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