Satellite News

After rumours surfaced on the Internet that China had faked a recently published picture of the moon’s surface, supposedly taken by the country’s Chang’e I lunar probe, the Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla has examined the issue and come to the conclusion that the image is real–but it has been tampered with a tiny bit.

NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) has arrived at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington for its final round of testing.

The second of two Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS, formerly SBIRS Low) demonstration satellites being built by prime contractor Northrop Grumman Corporation for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing.

COM DEV International Ltd. been awarded a contract to provide advanced payload electronics for a major commercial satellite constellation.

EaglePicher Technologies, LLC announced it has shipped its first two orders for lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries to Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC).

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) plans to join forces with OHB System AG in order to build satellites for the Galileo navigation system, the companies announced in Brussels.

A joint team of NPO PM and Thales Alenia Space has started electrical testing of the Ekspress-AM33 satellite being developed under the contract of Roskosmos, the Russian information and communications ministry and Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC).

DigitalGlobe announced that WorldView-1 has completed its commissioning, meets all of its requirements, and is delivering imagery to the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as part of the NextView programme.