Satellite News

State-owned Indonesian telecommunication company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk will be ordering a new satellite, Telkom 3, in the near future. The satellite is expected to be launched in 2010 or 2011.

IBEX — the first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space — is ready for launch on 19 October.

NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft completed its second Mercury flyby. Initial indications from radio signals indicate that the spacecraft continues to operate nominally.

Boeing has been awarded a US$650 million sole-source contract from NASA to continue to deliver and integrate the remaining components and software for the International Space Station (ISS).

Unlike the two previous generations of Meteosat spinning satellites, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) will be three-axis stabilised and each satellite will have different payloads for four different observation missions, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) said.

Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) said it provides the THEOS mission with uplink and downlink communication services during the Launch and Early Orbit Phase covering the 15 first days of the mission.

NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft will conduct the second of three flybys of Mercury on 6 October to photograph most of its remaining unseen surface and collect science data.

Nearly seven months after launch, ESA’s Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) completed its mission to deliver supplies to the International Space Station and successfully performed its final deorbit boosts and controlled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere today at 1331 UTC.