Satellite News

NASA said it was officially moving forward on a mission to conduct an unprecedented, in-depth study of Jupiter. Called Juno, the mission will be the first in which a spacecraft is placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit around the giant planet to understand its formation, evolution and structure.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shut down its ion propulsion system on 20 November as scheduled. The spacecraft is now gliding toward a Mars flyby in February 2009.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed the Small GEO Platform and Small GEO Mission contracts with the respective industrial primes, OHB-System AG (Germany) and Hispasat S.A. (Spain).

Thales Alenia Space announced the signature of a contract, with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Ltd, for the development, the delivery and the installation of elements in the Amos 4 Ground Segment.

Nilesat, has selected GMV’s real-time satellite monitoring and control product, hifly, to control the new Nilesat 201 satellite and GMV’s flight dynamics product, focusGEO, to perform the flight dynamics operations.

China’s new polar orbiting meteorological satellite, Fengyun 3A and its ground application system, started trial business operation, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said.

MicroSat Systems, Inc. (MSI) has contracted Saft to provide rechargeable Li-ion batteries for the 18 satellites the company is building for Orbcomm’s Generation 2 (OG2) constellation programme.

The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) announced its participation in the upcoming U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)/NASA “Firefly” CubeSat mission.