Satellite News

The U.S. Air Force said its Materiel Command’s Space Vehicles Directorate and Composite Technology Development have developed a technology that could protect spacecraft components such as solar arrays and antennas when deployed.

Chinese officials said the country didn’t break an rules by performing its controversial anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test in January, which remains on track to break all space debris records.

Launch of NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft is scheduled for 15 February from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch window is 2308 to 2326 UTC, a duration of 18 minutes.

NASA’s astrophysics programme has achieved the agency’s highest priority goals by focusing on large missions such as the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes but in doing so, it has squeezed out smaller missions that could be laying the foundation for future scientific discovery, says a new report from the U.S. National Research Council.

Five weather and space environmental sensors onboard the recently launched Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite DMSP F-17 have been switched on and are operating successfully, according to Northrop Grumman Corporation, the U.S. Air Force’s DMSP sensor management contractor.

The final segment of the flight primary mirror for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has completed manufacturing and been delivered for grinding and polishing, a major milestone achieved by Ball Aerospace & Technologies, Corp. and its subcontractors.

Anaren, Inc. has been selected to receive a contract valued in excess of US$8 million (EUR6.1 million) from Alcatel-Alenia Space (France) for development and production of integrated beamforming assemblies that will be deployed on the Globalstar-2 satellite payload.

The Swedish-led Prisma satellite system successfully passed a Critical Design Review (CDR) recently.