Satellite News

GHGSat said it is building on its momentum to deploy a constellation of satellites in collaboration with ABB. GHGSat’s next three satellites, GHGSat-C3, C4 and C5, will be launched into orbit in summer 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-5 mission.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. announced it has signed a deal with Japanese Earth imaging company Synspective to carry out three dedicated Electron launches.

Rocket: Soyuz 2.1a; Payload: Soyuz MS 20; Date: 8 December 2021, 0738 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Nine minutes into the flight the crewed spacecraft normally separated from the third stage and entered it target near-earth orbit.

Euroconsult has released its “Satellites to be Built & Launched” report for 2021. The 17,000 satellites expected to be launched in the next ten years represents a fourfold increase over past decade, reflecting structural changes in the whole space ecosystem and a limited short-term impact of the pandemic.

Spire Global, Inc. has been awarded a contract under ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP) Element 2 Program funded by UK Space Agency.

Inmarsat is working on a UK Space Agency-funded test project with the European Space Agency, alongside British partners Goonhilly Earth Station Limited and GMVNSL Limited, to deliver the first UK-generated satellite navigation (satnav) signal. The project provides a potential platform for the UK to enhance its capabilities in the Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) domain post-Brexit.

Astranis announced it has signed an agreement to provide broadband capacity with Astranis MicroGEO communications satellites to Grupo Andesat, a cellular services backhaul provider that connects cell towers in Peru to the Internet backbone, in a new partnership that will bring broadband Internet access to thousands of rural communities across Peru for the first time.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a contract with Airbus to build the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL) mission. ARIEL is the fourth medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme.