Satellite News

The U.S. administration has approved the purchase of new spy satellites and will buy more commercial imagery from the private sector to plug immediate gaps in satellite coverage.

GOCE’s highly sensitive gradiometer instrument has been switched on and is producing data. Forming the heart of GOCE, the gradiometer is specifically designed to measure Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy.

The first mirror segment that will fly on the James Webb Space Telescope, built by Northrop Grumman Corporation, has completed its first series of cryogenic temperature tests in the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama/USA.

Engineers have successfully ejected the dust cover from NASA’s Kepler telescope.

GOCE’s electric ion propulsion system has been switched on and confirmed to be operating normally, marking another milestone in the satellite’s post-launch commissioning phase.

Annual funding for the Russian GLONASS satellite navigation programme up to 2011 will not change, a Roskosmos official said.

Russian Rocket and Space Corporation Energia has won the tender for the design of a new Russian manned spacecraft.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced sweeping changes to the Pentagon budget. Among several programmes to be scrapped is the Transformational Satellite (TSAT) project.
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