Satellite News

DigitalGlobe has contracted with Raytheon Company to provide an enhanced constellation collection management system.

ESA’s CryoSat-2 has delivered its first data just hours after ground controllers switched on the satellite’s radar instrument for the first time. CryoSat-2 was launched on 8 April and has been performing exceptionally well during these critical first few days in orbit, the agency said.

Honeywell announced that it has been selected to supply newly designed Inertial Measurement Units (IMU), used to accurately position satellites in orbit, for the United States Air Force (USAF) Global Positioning Satellite III Program, in a contract worth US$45 million.

Honeywell announced that the space industry’s first radiation hardened electronic component for communication systems, which improves the speed of serial data communication fifty-fold over existing space electronics, has been selected to upgrade communication systems on the International Space Station. It will be launched on NASA’s space shuttle in August 2010.

NASA and JAXA have begun combining elements of their satellite resources to increase a critical type of Earth observation data. The partnership will more than double the quantity of this data that is used to explore earthquake hazards, forest declines, and changing water resources in the Americas.

Boeing announced that, as part of the Raytheon team awarded the space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) advanced control segment programme (OCX), it will develop portions of the U.S. Air Force’s new ground control segment.

Integral Systems, Inc., announced the on-schedule handover of satellite bus operations for the third Wideband Global SATCOM Space Vehicle (WGS SV-3) to the Command and Control System – Consolidated (CCS-C) baseline. This is the final satellite in WGS Block I to be successfully transitioned into the CCS-C baseline.

Boeing said it had transferred control of the third Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-P) to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently to begin on-orbit verification testing.