Launch

The Bartolomeo research platform, developed by Airbus for the International Space Station (ISS), has been delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, ahead of its planned launch in March. The European-built Bartolomeo is set to become the first commercial research platform to be attached to the ISS. Bartolomeo will now be subject to...

A new generation radio-frequency (RF) Power Processing Unit (PPU) for the VASIMR engine, built by Aethera Technologies for Ad Astra Rocket Company has completed a full-power test in vacuum at Ad Astra’s Texas facility near Houston on Jan. 20. The test involved operating the unit in hard vacuum and thermal steady- state at its full...

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus have signed a contract booking a Norwegian instrument for the Bartolomeo platform on the International Space Station (ISS), which is scheduled for launch in March 2020. The payload slot for the Norwegian instrument will monitor plasma density in the Earth’s atmosphere. The Bartolomeo platform, which is named after...

The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and Russia’s Roscosmos State Corporation have agreed to expand the joint orbital group of satellites involved in remote sensing of Earth, according to the Belarusian Telegraph Agency. The two entities will add two Russian satellites Canopus-B and Canopus-B-IK to bring the orbital group to seven satellites. Also, the...

Capella Space unveiled on Tuesday the features of its “Sequoia” Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite designed for on-demand Earth observation. The satellite is a re-engineering of Capella’s test satellite Denali, which was launched in December 2018.  Sequoia’s features include: A 3.5 meter deployed mesh-based reflector antenna combined with a high power RADAR to deliver high...

Just five years ago, small satellite operators would say “yes” to any possibility to get into orbit at a reasonable price, says Stephen Eisele, vice president of Business Development at Virgin Orbit. But times are changing, and with the small satellite market growing exponentially, the operators are increasingly aware of their significance for the launch...

Despite the likely demise of LeoSat, the Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) market is still poised to continue on unabated, with ambitious plays still underway. But who is launching what, and when? For the past seven years, talk of LEO satellites has spread through the industry. 2013 bore a fever of constellation activity. Companies such as OneWeb,...

Arianespace successfully launched a dual-satellite Ariane 5 mission from French Guiana on Thursday, placing the EUTELSAT KONNECT and GSAT-30 into geostationary transfer orbit. The launch, designated Flight VA251, was Arianespace’s first of the year. It was was the 315th mission by the Arianespace launcher family and the 107th by an Ariane 5 version. Both satellites,...

Lockheed Martin has shipped JCSAT-17, its third satellite based on the modernized LM 2100 bus, to French Guiana for launch. JCSAT-17, built for Sky Perfect JSAT (SJC), will provide flexible mobile communications services to users in Japan and the surrounding region. Arianespace will launch the satellite from its spaceport in Kourou aboard an Ariane 5...

Smallsat launcher Rocket Lab has started construction on a new Long Beach, California, facility which will serve as its headquarters, provide incremental production capacity, and Mission Control Center capabilities. The facility is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2020. The complex has been designed to produce more than 12 of Rocket Lab’s Electron launch...