Government/Military

A new report from the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) has highlighted how the Department of Defense’s (DOD) satellite control networks are fragmented and potentially duplicative.

[Satellite TODAY 04-26-13] MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) has signed CA$3.2 million worth of contracts with the Government of Canada’s Department of National Defense (DND) to provide operations for the east and west coast Radarsat-2 ground systems. These ground systems support the deliverables under the Polar Epsilon project, the broad-area surveillance system delivered by MDA...

Glonass-M satellite. Image credit: Reshetnev [Satellite TODAY 04-26-13] Arianespace has announced the successful 1804th launch of the Soyuz vehicle. Liftoff took place on Friday, April 26 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.       The company also announced the Russian government’s Glonass-M navigation satellite was accurately placed on the target orbit. This was the...

[Satellite TODAY 04-25-13] The European Space Agency (ESA) and Arianespace have announced their decision to postpone the Vega launch VV02 for 24 hours. The launch, originally scheduled for May 2, is now expected to occur the night of May 3 in order to carry out additional checks on the mobile gantry system used on the...

[Satellite TODAY 04-24-13] EUMETSAT announced the Metop-B has successfully replaced Metop-A as its prime operational polar-orbiting satellite following the end of its commissioning period. Metop-A will continue operations as long as its available capacities bring benefits to users.       The Metop polar-orbiting satellites deliver data for Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and climate and...

[Satellite TODAY 04-24-13] Satrec Initiative (SI) of South Korea and the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) of United Arab Emirates have jointly announced the development program of the DubaiSat-3 Earth observation small satellite system. SI has already signed an agreement with EIAST to provide technical consultancy for the DubaiSat-3 program this January....

[Satellite TODAY 04-18-13] Cal-Bay Systems has introduced its Spectrum DefenderTM, a new instrument that combines both spectrum monitoring and RF recording into one portable, off-the-shelf PXI-based platform.     As FCC regulations change, inexpensive, unlicensed devices can infringe on mission-critical and application-dependent VHF, UHF and microwave bands. Spectrum DefenderTM equips engineers to monitor, analyze, troubleshoot and...

[Satellite TODAY 04-18-13] MetiSpace Technologies CEO Theresa Beech is confident that the company can make a big impact in the U.S. government market this year. GMV, the private multi-national firm, based in Madrid sold its U.S. institutional business to the GMV USA management team, while keeping its commercial space business. MetiSpace Technologies is an exclusive...

NASA has awarded the University of California, Berkeley, up to $200 million to build a satellite to study how the Earth's weather affects the weather at the edge of space.

NASA has unveiled its plans to develop the technology and infrastructure to retrieve asteroids for human research.