Satellite News

China’s first lunar satellite, Chang’e, has entered its final assembly and testing stage, officials said. They expect the launch to take place as scheduled in 2007.

The CloudSat and CALIPSO satellites launched on 28 April from Vandenberg Air Force Base have completed commissioning activities.

SpaceDev subsidiary Starsys, Inc. has completed a 3.5 million cycle life test on the actuator system for the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

China plans a three-satellite mission to observe solar phenomena, including solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), interplanetary clouds, shock waves, as well as their effects on Earth, such as magnetic storms and auroral activities.

BAE Systems and Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) are under contract to deliver the OBC695B processor to control a small RF subsystem that will fly as an experiment on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

Genesis 1 self portrait. Image credit: Bigelow AerospaceClick to enlarge
Bigelow Aerospace’s inflatable Genesis 1 habitat has a stowaway on board; an experiment for NASA called Genebox. This shoebox-sized experiment will allow NASA to measure the effects of near weightlessness on the genetic structure of microorganisms. Although this is the first Genebox, NASA is planning to launch several of them over the next few years as part of the Vision for Space Exploration.

The U.S. Air Force’s second Wideband Global SATCOM spacecraft was shipped on 20 January to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
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The second of the three GLONASS-M satellites launched on 25 December 2008 has been commissioned.
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