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SATELLITE AND SPACE SHUTTLE NEWS
ESA'S SPACE STATION CARGO CRAFT 30 DAYS FROM LAUNCH - Europe's third Automated Transfer Vehicle was moved to the Ariane 5 launcher's final assembly building Tuesday, commencing the last phase of the cargo freighter's launch campaign before blasting off March 9 for the International Space Station.
Outfitted with eight supply racks, two more than the first two ATV missions, craft will carry about 1,300 pounds more dry cargo than the disposable freighter's previous flight last year.
"Every cubic centimeter of the carrier is at full capability," said a European Space Agency fact sheet.
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(Source: SpaceFlight Now)
NASA CALLS FOR NEW TAXIS TO FLY TO SPACE STATION - NASA is looking for at least two U.S. firms to design and build space taxis to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, program managers said on Tuesday.
NASA plans to invest $300 million to $500 million in each of the firms selected under new 21-month partnership agreements, Ed Mango, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew program, said at an industry briefing at the Kennedy Space Center prior to the release of a solicitation on Tuesday.
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(Source: Reuters)
SPACEX LAUNCH WILL BE A KEY TEST FOR NASA - NASA controllers and curious spectators won't be the only ones watching the upcoming launch of the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station. Lawmakers, administration officials and other policy makers with a role in deciding NASA spending will be watching as well.
The launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, now scheduled for April, is billed as a demonstration mission to show the world a private company can safely deliver cargo to the space station.
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(Source: USA Today)
VEGA’S DEBUT PUSHED TO END OF LAUNCH WINDOW - The European Space Agency (ESA) on Feb. 3 announced another delay in the inaugural flight of the Vega small-satellite launcher, saying the launch is now set for Feb. 13 from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.
The four-day delay would not in itself be significant but for the fact that it now places the launch at the extreme limit of what is permissible before the Vega team must stand down for at least a month, and likely longer.
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(Source: Space News)
OBSERVING SATELLITE LAUNCHED BY MODIFIED IRANIAN MISSILE - Iran launched its third satellite Friday, demonstrating a maturing space and missile capability as tensions mount over the country's nuclear program.
The Navid satellite launched before sunrise from a military base in northern Iran. A two-stage Safir rocket, possibly featuring upgrades to increase its lift capacity, boosted the cube-shaped satellite into an orbit with an altitude between 155 miles and 230 miles, according to state news agencies.
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(Source: SpaceFlight Now)
ENGINE FAILURE BEHIND MERIDIAN SATELLITE CRASH - The crash of Russia’s Meridian communication satellite late last year was caused by the destruction of one of the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket’s engines, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, said on Tuesday.
“An inter-agency commission has concluded that the reason was an early opening of the combustion section of the rocket’s third stage,” Popovkin said during a meeting dedicated to Russia’s space industry development.
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(Source: RIA Novosti
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SES RELOCATES SATELLITE TO MEET GROWING CUSTOMER DEMAND - SES S.A. today announced that the SES-3 satellite is being relocated from its former location over North America to Asia, an area experiencing great demand for state-of-the-art, reliable satellite capacity.
The SES-3 satellite is being relocated to 108.2 deg East to provide coverage of the Middle East and South Asia regions, where SES experiences growing customer demand. The drift began in mid-December 2011 and the satellite is expected to arrive at its new orbital location on February 6, 2012.
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(Source: MarketWatch)
GERMAN SATELLITE 'MINUTES FROM CRASHING INTO BEIJING' - A two-and-a-half ton German satellite came within minutes of crashing into Beijing the European Space Agency has disclosed.
New calculations by the agency show that if the Rosat satellite had remained aloft for just seven more minutes after re-entering the earth's atmosphere in October it would have plunged into the Chinese capital of 20 million people.
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(Source: Telegraph.co.uk
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RUSSIA WILL REPLACE SOYUZ FOR NEXT ISS MISSION: SOURCE - Russia will replace the Soyuz spacecraft set to take the next crew to the International Space Station after a fault was found in testing, a space industry source said Wednesday.
The Russian space agency had previously said that only a capsule used for the crew's re-entry to Earth would be replaced after tests found it was not hermetically sealed, delaying a mission originally set for March 30.
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(Source: AFP)
RUSSIA TO DELAY SPACE MISSION DUE TO TECHNICAL PROBLEMS - Russia plans to delay the next mission carrying US and Russian astronauts to the International Space Station by several weeks due to problems with the spaceship's descent vehicle, Interfax news agency quoted an industry source as saying Friday.
The expected delay follows a series of technical mishaps that marred Russia's celebration of 50 years last year since Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first human space flight.
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(Source: Times of India
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