Satellite News

Thales Alenia Space has started construction of a new clean room. The construction works will span for a little less than a year. Once finished, the company will have the capacity to pursue high complexity activities such as the integration of the telecommunication payloads for Spain’s next generation governmental satellites Spainsat NG and other large systems in the field of Earth observation and science instruments.

The European Space Agency said that positive steps towards solving the problems discovered with the ExoMars mission parachutes have been taken in the last month to keep on track for the July-August 2020 launch window.

LeoLabs, Inc. announced it had launched its Kiwi Space Radar (KSR). As the first commercial radar to track objects in LEO as small as 2 centimeters, the KSR sets a new standard for tracking the full range of threats to satellites from orbital debris, the company said.

The Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) satellites built by Northrop Grumman Corporation for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) have far surpassed their four-year on-orbit design life, completing a tenth year of space operations.

Thales Alenia Space announced the arrival of the first shipping container designed for the new family of communications satellites based on the Spacebus NEO platform.

The Next Generation OPIR Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting (GEO) satellite programme, commonly referred to as NGG, achieved another major milestone in 2019 by completing its system/ground and space vehicle preliminary design review (PDR) on 27 September 2019.

Astroscale Holdings Inc. has entered the assembly, integration and test (AIT) phase of its End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission, following completion of rigorous design reviews and subsystem testing.

Raytheon Company said it will develop new space systems and flight software, and provide engineering, training and operations support for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed by Caltech, under a five-year, $150 million contract. The contract could potentially be worth US$300 million over 10 years if all options are exercised.