Launch

SpaceX launched its 19th Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-19) on Friday at 17:29 UTC, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage about nine minutes after liftoff and will attach to the space station on Sunday, December 8. The Dragon spacecraft that is supporting...

Thales Alenia Space will build the Nilesat-301 geostationary communications satellite for Egyptian operator Nilesat, the company announced December 4. Thales Alenia Space will be responsible for satellite design, production, testing and in-orbit acceptance tests, and will provide satellite control system for Nilesat in both Cairo and Alexandria. Nilesat-301 will be based on the Spacebus 4000-B2...

SES will employ the Hughes Jupiter System to enable services on its SES-17 satellite, which is being built by Thales Alenia Space and expected to launch in 2021. The agreement calls for Hughes to supply its next-generation ground network system, including data centers and hub equipment, which will operate over SES-17, a satellite with a...

Spaceflight, together with Hypergiant SEOPS, will be launching three cubesats from the International Space Station (ISS) and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft in early January. The payloads will travel to the ISS through a NASA Commercial Resupply (CRS) mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon scheduled to launch atop a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station...

Satellite operator Spacecom has selected Rugby, Warwickshire-based Satellite Mediaport Services (SMS) to serve as the European gateway for its new AMOS-17 high-throughput communication satellite, which recently become operational over the 17 degrees East orbital slot. AMOS-17 provides high-throughput C-, Ka- and Ku-band to Africa, the Middle East, Europe, India and China. SMS will uplink the...

China successfully launched a new weather radar-imaging satellite designed for civilian use, Chinese state media confirmed. Gaofen 12, the latest in a fleet of Chinese Earth observation satellites, lifted off from the Taiyuan Space Center in Northern China on a Long March 4C rocket at approximately 7 p.m. EST on Wednesday, November 27. If reports...

Arianespace successfully orbited two geostationary satellites: TIBA-1, for Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space on behalf of the Government of Egypt; and GX5 for the operator Inmarsat. The launch took place on Tuesday, Nov. 26, at 18:23 p.m. (local time) from the Guiana Space Center (CSG), Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. On Nov....

The U.S. Space Command accepted the Wideband Global Satcom (WGS)-10 satellite into the operational constellation and will be transitioning users to utilize the bandwidth provided by this new satellite. Boeing completed verification of the satellite’s performance and handed control authority to the U.S. Air Force on July 10. Following handover, Space and Missile Systems Center’s...

The Orion spaceship transferred from the Kennedy Space Center to Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, and is scheduled to arrive on Nov 26. Its destination the world’s largest thermal vacuum chamber, owned by NASA, where the hot test phase of several months will begin for the spacecraft. A team of engineers and technicians from...

Arianespace postponed the launch of an Ariane 5 rocket, which would carry Egypt’s TIBA-1 satellite and the Inmarsat GX5 satellite. This was due to a power supply anomaly in the ground segment of the Ariane 5 launch complex, the final chronology for Flight VA250 was stopped at 20 minutes prior to liftoff (H0-20), leading to...