Satellite News

Telesat announced that, following a highly rigorous process involving leading satellite manufacturing companies, it has entered into a contract with the consortium of Thales Alenia Space and Maxar Technologies, the owner of SSL, to further develop system designs for Telesat’s LEO constellation.

Telesat announced that, following a highly rigorous process involving leading satellite manufacturing companies, it has entered into a contract with the consortium of Thales Alenia Space and Maxar Technologies, the owner of SSL, to further develop system designs for Telesat’s LEO constellation.

OneWeb Satellites, a joint venture between Airbus and OneWeb, announced the delivery of the first satellites for the OneWeb constellation.

Kleos Space S.A. said that the company’s first cluster of satellites has entered the Integration Phase after successfully undergoing Critical Design Review (CDR) with Gomspace A/S. The CDR ensured the satellites could proceed towards assembly, validation, integration and testing and confirms they meet stated performance cost, schedule, and risk requirements.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a one-year contract with ArianeGroup to study and prepare for a mission to go to the Moon with the aim of mining regolith.

The Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 was brought back to full operational status and completed its first science observations on 17 January. The instrument autonomously shut down on 8 January after internal data erroneously indicated invalid voltage levels.

Specialists will try once again to regain control over Spektr-R radio telescope on 21 January when the distance to the spacecraft will be minimal, said Alexander Bloshenko, science advisor to Roskosmos chief Rogozin.

On 27 December 2018, Thales Alenia Space assembled the avionics and Xenon propulsion modules to form the service module of the first Spacebus Neo satellite, KONNECT, a high throughput satellite ordered by Eutelsat.