Satellite News

NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes, launched in August 2012, have entered the final phase in their exploration.

RemoveDEBRIS successfully fired a harpoon on 8 February 2018 at a speed of 20 metres per second and penetrated a target made of satellite panel material. The harpoon and 1.5 metre target boom were designed by a team at Airbus in Stevenage UK.

The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made their last attempt to revive Opportunity on 12 February, to no avail.

NASA has selected a new space mission that will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy’s planetary systems.

GOES-17 is now operational as the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES West satellite.

Airbus and Japanese telecommunications satellite operator Sky Perfect JSAT have signed a co-operation agreement for the design preparation of the EDRS-D node. This third communication node of the SpaceDataHighway system is to be positioned over the Asia-Pacific region before 2025. EDRS-D will lead to a significant increase in the system’s communication capacity and considerably expand its coverage.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Spacecraft Element (SCE) successfully completed acoustic and sine vibration testing at Northrop Grumman Corporation in Redondo Beach.

Northrop Grumman Corporation announced that its Cygnus spacecraft has departed from the International Space Station after an 81-day stay during the NG-10 mission.