Government/Military

[Via Satellite 01-20-2015] SES Government Solutions (SES GS) has appointed Brig Gen Peter Hoene USAF (Ret) as new president and CEO, effective March 2. Hoene succeeds current President and CEO Tip Osterthaler, who plans to retire after nine years with the company. Hoene joined SES GS in 2011 as corporate vice president for development, and...

[Via Satellite 01-16-2015] The Russian remote-sensing satellite Meteor M2, launched on July 8, 2014 aboard a Soyuz rocket with six other spacecraft, is close to finishing a lengthy series of in-orbit tests. According to TsENKI, the testing requires extra time due to the number and complexity of on-board systems. Both the Russian Federal Space Agency...

[Via Satellite 01-16-2015] NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) satellite has located the United Kingdom’s Beagle 2 lander mission, which was found partially deployed on the Martian surface. Images taken with the Ball Aerospace-built High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera showed that the lander did touchdown on the planet on Christmas Day in December 2003...

[Via Satellite 01-14-2015] The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has appointed its Director of the Space Applications Center (SAC), A S Kiran Kumar to the office of secretary of the Department of Space, Chairman of the Space Commission, and Chairman of ISRO. Kiran Kumar takes the place of K. Radhakrishnan. Kiran Kumar started with SAC...

[Via Satellite 01-13-2015] SES and the Luxembourg government have agreed to create a joint company that will own and operate an X- and Ka-band military satellite. Expected to launch in 2017, the spacecraft would cover Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region from an orbital position in the European arc. Both SES and...

[Via Satellite 01-13-2015] Seeking to expand applications for wideband tactical networking, the United States Marine Corps has purchased $15 million of Falcon 3 vehicular radio systems and accessories for its AN/MRC-145 program. Harris Corp. built the system on the Falcon 3 AN/PRC-117G, which delivers voice, video, data and tactical broadband capability to the battlefield. “Our...

[Via Satellite 01-13-2015] McMurdo Group’s recently acquired Techno-Sciences has received contracts worth approximately $7.5 million from NASA and the governments of Cyprus, Brunei and Argentina for Search and Rescue (SAR) network infrastructure solutions and next-generation Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue (MEOSAR) systems. The company will deploy Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) software for a European...

[Via Satellite 01-12-2015] General Dynamics Mission Systems and Rockwell Collins have shipped more than 1,200 AN/PRC-155 radios for a Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) contract with the U.S. government. According to the companies, the PRC-155 is now the first two-channel fielded radio to be operationally deployed for the U.S. Army. The remainder of the 1,500...

[Via Satellite 01-12-2015] The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected Thales Alenia Space for one of the three phase B1 studies of the Planetary Transits and Oscillation of Stars (PLATO) program, part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-25. The main purpose of the PLATO mission, scheduled for launch in 2024, is to study planetary systems outside...

[Via Satellite 01-09-2015] The U.S. Air Force has awarded a potential multi-billion-dollar contract to a joint venture between Raytheon and General Dynamics. Under the contract, the joint venture, called Range Generation Next (RGNext), will be required to operate, maintain, and sustain launch ranges at Florida’s Space Coast and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The...