PARIS — Arianespace will loft the Eutelsat 25B and Indian G-Sat 7 satellites together on an Ariane 5 by the end of August, following the launch of Europe’s Alphasat I-XL and India’s Insat 3D atop the heavy-lift rocket July 25. The missions will mark the third and fourth of a planned five Ariane 5 launches in 2013, says Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel, who took the helm of the European launch consortium in April.
NEW DELHI — The Indian space agency’s Mars Orbiter Mission is on target to lift off in the third week of October. “The Mars mission is getting ready at our Satellite Centre in Bengaluru [in southern India],” says Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan. “We are planning to start stacking [the launch vehicle] from July 29, and the launch will be any day from Oct. 21 from the spaceport at Sriharikota.” Following the launch, the mission is expected to take eight months to reach Mars.
Bucking their Republican counterparts and the Obama White House, Democrats on the House Science Committee are offering an “alternative” NASA reauthorization that sets a 15-year goal of landing humans on Mars.
Telespazio has been awarded a €216 million ($277 million) contract by the European Satellite Service Provider, ESSP SAS, as part of the European Union’s Egnos satellite navigation overlay program. The eight-year contract was signed in Toulouse by Telespazio CEO Luigi Pasquali and ESSP President Dirk Werquin. It gives the Finmeccanica/Thales-owned satellite services company the lead-subcontractor role to ESSP, a consortium of European air navigation authorities that functions as the Egnos system operator and service provider to the European Commission.
NEW DELHI — India has raised doubts regarding the launch of its second robotic lunar mission — Chandrayaan II — due to development delays with its Russian-furnished lander. Due to launch next year, Chandraayan II will include an unmanned orbiter, a lander supplied by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and a rover to be developed by India for in-situ scientific exploration of the lunar surface.
Telespazio has been awarded a €216 million ($277 million) contract by the European Satellite Service Provider, ESSP SAS, as part of the European Union’s Egnos satellite navigation overlay program.
Any launch vehicle that flies as often as Russia's Proton is bound to have its share of mishaps. The venerable heavy-lifter has flown 388 missions since its first in 1965, 45 of which have been deemed total or partial failures.
How does a squadron charged with testing navigation and guidance systems in extreme jamming know where its aircraft and weapons are and how they are performing when GPS is jammed? The answer from next year on will be by using a local positioning system that has the potential to back up GPS wherever jamming or spoofing could have disastrous results, such as critical infrastructure, airports or guiding unmanned aircraft in civil airspace.
Business was booming for Raytheon at the recent Paris air show. The defense electronics giant's “hospitality chalet”—a two-story structure set up for VIP meetings—was packed with prospective buyers from places such as Oman, Qatar and Japan. “This is the busiest I have ever been at an air show,” proclaimed CEO Bill Swanson, who is aiming to raise exports to 30% of Raytheon's sales, up from an impressive 26%.
After two decades rising through the executive ranks at communications services provider Amdocs Management, Dov Baharav had no defense experience when he was tapped in 2011 to serve as chairman of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). During his tenure at Amdocs, Baharav oversaw complex financial systems and high-tech development projects in the lead-up to the dot-com bust, when he was appointed CEO.
Michael Mecham (San Francisco), Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington)
Spaceborne study of the Sun has produced spectacular images like these over the years, but still leaves much about our nearest star cloaked in mystery. Now an ultraviolet (UV) telescope with unusually high spectral bandwidth will try to solve one of the most puzzling—why temperatures vary so dramatically between the Sun's surface and the upper limits of its turbulent atmosphere.
GeoMetWatch, a startup that is building on its engineers’ experience developing an unflown government hyperspectral weather sounder to produce commercial weather hosted payloads, has entered a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA to exchange data from orbit for surplus hardware and calibration services.
HOUSTON — International Space Station astronauts Chris Cassidy of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency plan to further prepare the six-person orbiting laboratory for the arrival of Russia’s Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) during a pair of July spacewalks that will include external alterations to ready the outpost for possible power and cooling system failures.
STANDING DOWN: Jason-1, a Franco-U.S. ocean-topography spacecraft in operation since Dec. 7, 2001, has gone offline after its sole remaining transmitter failed on June 21. NASA and the French space agency CNES decommissioned the Earth-science bird after 11.5 years of service continuing the data set started in 1992 by Topex/Poseidon and continuing today with the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2. Built by Thales Alenia Space, the 500-kg.
OHB System AG of Germany has signed an €816 million ($1.06 billion) contract with Germany’s defense procurement agency to develop the SARah satellite-based radar reconnaissance system. SARah aims to provide an enhanced follow-on to Germany’s five-satellite SAR-Lupe constellation, which became fully operational in 2008. Built by OHB System AG, SAR-Lupe, which utilizes one ground station, is slated to retire after November 2017.
PARIS — A Proton M/Block DM-03 rocket carrying three Russian Glonass navigation satellites veered wildly off course shortly after liftoff July 2, exploding into a fiery ball before crashing 2.5 km from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
NASA has cleared Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) through two more of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) milestones, paving the way for the company’s modified Dragon cargo carrier to begin pad-abort testing as early as this year. The U.S. space agency accepted the SpaceX human certification plan, which outlines everything the company plans to do to get ready for human spaceflight. That includes tests, demonstration, analyses, inspections, verifications and training events, NASA said.
NEW DELHI — India on July 1 lofted its first navigation and timing satellite meant to provide accurate position information services to both civilians and the military. IRNSS-1A, the first satellite of the seven-spacecraft Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), was launched on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C22) from the spaceport at Sriharikota off the coast of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, says an official at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Successful tests of an all-composite cryogenic fuel tank for space launch vehicles hold promise for lower-cost access to space, perhaps before the decade is out. A small composite fuel tank fabricated by Boeing with funding from the “game-changing” program of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate contained 2,091 gal. of liquid hydrogen through a series of shifts in its internal pressure and three temperature cycles ranging from ambient down to minus 423F.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking industry and public comment as it proposes new rules it says “would advance the commercial space industry and the important role it will play in our nation’s economy and technological innovation now and in the future.”
SAN FRANCISCO — NASA reports “a great insertion orbit” for its newest orbiting telescope for studying the Sun’s dynamic temperature bands, which was drop-launched from a former airliner off the central California coast at 7:28 p.m. PDT June 27.
