Satellite News

On its fourth flight with Ariane 5 in 2019, Arianespace will orbit two telecommunications satellites on 22 November (UTC): TIBA-1 for Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space, on behalf of the Government of Egypt; and the GX5 satellite for the operator Inmarsat.

The JCSAT-18/Kacific1 communications satellite, built by Boeing, has arrived at SpaceX facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will be launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket to geostationary orbit.

Airbus space engineers are currently testing the Copernicus Sentinel-6A satellite at the Space Test Centre of Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (IABG) in Ottobrunn – near Munich – to prove its readiness for space. During the test campaign, which will last until spring 2020, the Airbus team will check that the satellite is able to survive the severe conditions of launch and the space environment.

NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C) fired for the first time recently inside a vacuum chamber at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The thruster is undergoing performance testing to verify it can withstand the extreme launch vibrations and hot and cold temperatures of spaceflight.

Aerojet Rocketdyne and NASA recently demonstrated an Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) thruster at full power for the first time, achieving an important programme milestone. Aerojet Rocketdyne-developed AEPS thrusters are slated to be used on the Power and Propulsion Element of NASA’s Gateway, the agency’s orbiting lunar outpost for robotic and human exploration operations in deep space.

NASA will contribute an instrument to a European space mission that will explore the atmospheres of hundreds of planets orbiting stars beyond our Sun, or exoplanets, for the first time.

China has successfully tracked and received data from the newly launched Earth observation satellite Gaofen-7, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Russia plans to monitor ice conditions along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) using twelve small satellites, which Roskosmos will construct jointly with Russia’s nuclear authority, Rosatom, a Rosatom representative was quoted as saying.