Satellite News

China’s Tiangong-2 space lab successfully re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on 19 July under controlled conditions.

Nanosatellite mission integrator NanoAvionics UK Ltd. and UK satellite communications provider Lacuna Space, both based at Harwell Campus Space Cluster, have signed a second contract to integrate the Lacuna Space LoRa-based Space Gateway into NanoAvionics’ M6P nanosatellite bus which will be launched in Q4 2019 via a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

Kleos Space S.A., a space- powered Radio Frequency Reconnaissance data provider, has completed all acceptance reviews and the satellites are mission ready awaiting transport to RocketLab’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand.

Made In Space (MIS) has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation a subcontract to support NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) demonstration of the autonomous robotic manufacturing and assembly platform, Archinaut, on a flight mission.

The heightened interest in going to the Moon shows that there could be a market in providing satellite communications beyond Earth, ESA said in a statement.

OneWeb announced the successful test of its six satellites in Low Earth Orbit. All satellites delivered high-speed, low-latency services, with speed of more than 400 Mbps which enabled real-time video streaming in Full HD from space.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on 11 July (UTC) performed a series of operations for the second touchdown of Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa2 on the Ryugu asteroid and the collection of its soil samples.

The mission critical design review (M-CDR) of NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space-based astrophysics observatory was recently completed at Ball Aerospace’s Boulder, Colorado, facility. The IXPE mission is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, with support from Ball Aerospace, the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at University of Colorado Boulder and other partners.