Satellite News

After four months of tests and qualification of the entire satellite and the ground segment by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French space agency, command and control operations for the Jason-2 ocean altimetry satellite were handed over to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The Astra 1M satellite, built by Astrium for SES Astra, will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 5 November, 2044 UTC.

Hubble Space Telescope regular science operations have been resumed, but NASA managers have announced that they will not meet a February 2009 launch date for the fifth and final repair mission, STS-125.

Northrop Grumman Corporation has completed manufacturing and integrating a spacecraft engine that runs on non-toxic propellants of liquid oxygen and liquid methane for possible use on NASA human exploration missions.

The fourth orbit raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was carried out on 29 October. During this manoeuvre, the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about three minutes.

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a US$30 million contract for the development phase of the Self-Awareness Space Situational Awareness (SASSA) technology demonstration programme.

The current primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope is now back in active operation and will resume science observations shortly.

Lockheed Martin has successfully completed acoustic testing of the first geosynchronous orbit (GEO-1) spacecraft in the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) programme.