GLORY SATELLITE FAILS TO MAKE ORBIT - A rocket carrying the Glory Earth-observing satellite launched on Friday but failed to place the satellite into orbit, sending both plummeting into the Pacific, Nasa said on Friday. The space agency said a protective covering on the Taurus XL rocket did not separate as planned three minutes after launch at 5:09am EST/1009 GMT. With the covering intact, the rocket was too heavy to get the satellite into orbit. “We failed to make orbit and all indications are that the satellite and rocket are in the South Pacific Ocean somewhere,” Nasa launch director Omar Baez said at a news conference.    More
(Source: Independent Online - Sep 7)

NEXT-GENERATION WEATHER SATELLITE SHIPPED TO LAUNCH BASE IN CALIFORNIA - A new weather observatory that will track storms across the globe as it orbits from pole to pole has been trucked to its launch site in California for a long-awaited ascent into space this November. The first spacecraft in the Joint Polar Satellite System, JPSS No. 1, is targeting a liftoff Nov. 10 at 1:47:03 a.m. local time (4:47:03 a.m. EST; 0947:03 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. JPSS is the next American polar-orbiting weather satellite series that will collect data needed for long-range forecasts and track environmental trends. It is is a collaboration between NOAA for operational weather needs and NASA for climate research.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 7)

STUDENTS FROM INDIA AND RUSSIA BUILD SSTV CUBESAT - The Times of India reports students from Russia and India are building an amateur radio satellite that will transmit SSTV images from space. The 1U CubeSat Iskra-5 is being built by 20 students from Moscow Aviation Institute and 9 from Indian cities like Chennai and Bangalore through Space Kidz India to mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relationship between the two countries.   More
(Source: AMSAT UK - Sep 6)

SATELLITE, HEAT SHIELD OF INDIAN ROCKET TO RE-ENTER IN 40-60 DAYS - The Indian navigation satellite IRNSS-1H stuck inside a rocket's heat shield -- together weighing around 2.4-tonnes -- now tumbling in outer space, is expected to re-enter the earth's atmosphere in a couple of months. However, there may not be any impact on the ground, said a senior official of the Indian space agency. "The satellite tracking stations are getting intermittent signals from IRNSS-1H. The fuel on-board the satellite has been depleted by firing the motors w ..    More
(Source: Economic Times - Sep 6)

LAST-SECOND LAUNCH ABORT GROUNDS TWO U.S.-BUILT COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES - An Ariane 5 countdown in French Guiana was aborted Tuesday with the European-made rocket’s main engine already running, postponing the launch of two commercial communications satellites until engineers can resolve the problem. The rare last-second abort came at 2151 GMT (5:51 p.m. EDT; 6:51 p.m. French Guiana time) Tuesday as the Ariane 5’s Vulcain 2 main engine, a cryogenic powerplant consuming super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, throttled up to full power.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 6)

THIS SPACECRAFT IS THINNER THAN A HUMAN HAIR AND CAN CAPTURE SPACE DEBRIS - Last year, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A satellite collided with a tiny chunk of debris. Fortunately, the resulting damage to its solar panel turned out to be minor. But it got lucky. If the piece of space trash had been slightly larger, it could have shattered the entire panel, according to Holger Krag, head of the agency’s Space Debris Office who spoke about the incident at this past spring's 7th European Conference on Space Debris. Earth’s orbit is littered with bolts, flecks of paint, dead satellites, and other leftovers from past missions.   More
(Source: Popular Science - Sep 6)

SPACEX TO LAUNCH SHARED ECHOSTAR, SES SATELLITE IN OCTOBER - SpaceX intends to launch EchoStar-105/SES-11 on a partially reused Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than October, the company said Aug. 31. The mission will be SpaceX’s third launch to use a previously flown Falcon 9 booster. The first was the March launch of SES-10 followed by the June launch of BulgariaSat-1. Luxembourg-based SES and EchoStar of Englewood, Colorado, ordered the satellite from Airbus Defence and Space in August 2014 as a replacement for AMC-15, which is now 13 years old. EchoStar will lease the Ku-band payload on SES-11, rebranding it as EchoStar-105. Both satellite operators originally anticipated the spacecraft launching in late 2016, but SpaceX’s September 2016 Falcon 9 explosion set the mission back about a year.    More
(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 5)

NASA'S ASTEROID-BOUND SPACECRAFT TO SLINGSHOT PAST EARTH - NASA's asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer), will pass about 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) above Earth just before 12:52 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 22. Using Earth as a slingshot, the spacecraft will receive an assist to complete its journey to the asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx is undertaking a challenging mission to visit the near-Earth asteroid, survey the surface, collect samples and deliver them safely back to Earth.    More
(Source: Space Daily - Sep 4)

VIETNAM AIMS TO DESIGN AND LAUNCH SATELLITE - Pham Anh Tuan, general director of the Vietnam Space Center said at a technical handover ceremony at Nha Trang Observatory that Vietnam is going to launch satellites designed and made by Vietnamese. According to Nguyen Duc Cuong, chair of the Vietnam Aerospace Association, there are two kinds of satellites Vietnam needs to launch – geostationary telecommunication satellite (aerial stations to relay telecommunications) and remote sensing satellites (that serve weather forecasting and environmental monitoring).   More
(Source: VietNamNet Bridge - Sep 4)

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