Satellite News

The German radar satellite TanDEM-X, built by Astrium, has proven its suitability for operation in space in a series of special tests at IABG in Ottobrunn, near Munich.
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Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that it has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) for a spacecraft and airborne system support services contract valued at approximately US$95 million over a five-year period.
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has passed its most significant mission milestone to date, the Mission Critical Design Review, or MCDR. This signifies the integrated observatory will meet all science and engineering requirements for its mission.
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SEAKR Engineering, Inc. announced that SEAKR’s Application Independent Processor (AIP), which is a component of Cisco’s IP Routing in Space (IRIS) payload hosted on Intelsat’s IS-14 GEO communication satellite, has successfully passed In-Orbit-Testing.
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The in-flight acceptance of the Helios IIB satellite has been successfully completed by Astrium on behalf of the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) and under delegation from the French space agency, CNES.

The European Commission announced it was financing the Alphasat telecommunications satellite, which is expected to launch in 2012, with up to EUR225 million (US$299 million) from the EU’s Risk-sharing Finance Facility (RSFF), jointly created by the European Commission and European Investment Bank.
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said it was issued the Authorised Return of Overseas Launch Space Object (AROLSO) for the Sample Recovery Capsule aboard the Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa from the Space Licensing and Safety Office (SLASO) of the Australian Government.
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China and Brazil signed a memorandum of understanding which gives both countries direct access to data from the satellites the two countries jointly developed, launched and operated.