Satellite News

Japan has successfully put its recently launched moon probe Kaguya into lunar orbit. The spacecraft, also known as SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer), was placed in a highly elliptical 101 km x 11,741 km orbit as planned.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. has won an approximately C$65 million (EUR47 million, US$66 million) contract from Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND) to deliver an information solution called SAPPHIRE for the surveillance of space objects.

Thales Alenia Space announced that it has transferred the Star One C1 communications satellite to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana.

Boeing has shipped the third Thuraya communications satellite from its satellite manufacturing facility in El Segundo, California/USA, to the Sea Launch Home Port in Long Beach, California, where it will be prepared for a November launch aboard a Zenit 3SL.

An Ariane 5GS is to launch Intelsat 11 and Optus D2 on 5 October between 2128 and 2213 UTC. Both satellites were built by Orbital Sciences Corporation.

Australia is to join the United States in a partnership to share the Wideband Global Satellite Communications (WGS) system by funding one of six planned satellites.

NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency Roskosmos have agreed to fly two Russian scientific instruments on NASA spacecraft that will conduct robotic missions to the moon and Mars.

NovAtel Inc. said it has achieved a Galileo programme milestone through the award of a contract worth EUR6.3 million (US$8.6 million) by Thales Alenia Space Italia (TAS-I) for the continued development of the Ground Reception Chain (GRC) reference receiver for Galileo.