ORBITAL ATK BEGINS ASSEMBLY OF INDUSTRY'S FIRST COMMERCIAL IN-SPACE SATELLITE SERVICING SYSTEM - Orbital ATK reports significant progress on the industry's first commercial in-space satellite servicing system. The (MEV-1) spacecraft successfully completed its critical design review earlier this year and is now in production with about 75% of the platform and payload components already delivered to the company's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Virginia. The spacecraft will begin system-level testing in spring 2018 with launch planned late next year. MEV-1 will provide satellite life extension services to its anchor customer, Intelsat S.A., beginning in early 2019.   More
(Source: SpaceDaily - Sep 15)

NASA'S TERRA SATELLITE SPIES TYPHOON TALIM'S LARGE EYE - On Sept. 14 at 0215 UTC (Sept. 13 at 10:15 p.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer of MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Typhoon Talim. The image revealed a large, open eye surrounded by powerful thunderstorms as the storm moved through the East China Sea. The southern extent of Talim's clouds were over northern Taiwan at the time of the image. The MODIS image was created by NASA's MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Sept. 14, Typhoon Talim's maximum sustained winds were near 120 knots (138.1 mph/222 kph).    More
(Source: Phys.org - Sep 15)

ASIASAT PLANNING SMALL HTS SATELLITE TO COVER CHINA - Hong Kong-based fleet operator AsiaSat will soon order a “modest”-size high-throughput satellite (HTS) that will leverage the company’s access to the Chinese market, Barrie Woolston, AsiaSat’s chief commercial officer, said Sept. 14. “We’ve looked long and hard at what we can use existing capacity for, and when we will make the leap into HTS,” Woolston said here at the World Satellite Business Week conference. “We are at that stage now where we are specifying a new satellite … that will hit the streets in 36 months time.”   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 15)

CHINA’S CARGO SPACECRAFT COMPLETES FAST-DOCKING WITH SPACE LAB TIANGONG-2 - China’s first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 completed an automated fast-docking with experimental space lab Tiangong-2 which is currently in orbit. Controlled from Earth, Tianzhou-1 began to approach Tiangong-2 at 5:24PM (local time) yesterday and it took six and a half hours to complete the fast-docking with the space lab. It was the third docking between the two spacecraft using fast-docking technology. Previously, it took about two days to dock, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.   More
(Source: Livemint - Sep 15)

US-RUSSIAN CREW ARRIVES SPACE STATION AFTER QUICK 6-HOUR TRIP - Two NASA astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut successfully launched toward the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday (Sept. 12). NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin blasted off atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:17 p.m. EDT (2127 GMT). Packed tightly inside their Soyuz MS-06 space capsule, the trio began their 6-hour trip to the ISS after a flawless launch sequence. "Everything is nominal on board [and] the crew is doing fine," a translator for Russia's Mission Control Center in Moscow repeatedly announced during a live webcast as the Soyuz MS-06 soared into the sky.    More
(Source: Space.com - Sep 13)

SPACE STATION CREW FORCED TO SEEK SHELTER DURING MASSIVE SOLAR FLARE - The International Space Station (ISS) crew had to hide in a special shelter during a massive solar flare, a nuclear scientist said. The sun produced several huge solar flares last week, one of which was the strongest observed in a decade. “Yesterday [on Sunday], the cosmonauts on the ISS received an ‘alert’ signal, and they had to seek a temporary shelter at the station,”...   More
(Source: RT - Sep 13)

SOYUZ MS-06 SPACECRAFT WITH CREW OF THREE LAUNCHED FROM BAIKONUR - The Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft carrying three international crew members to the International Space Station (ISS) was launched on Wednesday from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, a TASS correspondent reported. "The launch of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft was performed at 00:17 Moscow time," a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The spacecraft, carrying Russia’s Aleksandr Misurkin, and NASA’s Mark Vande Hei and Joseph Acaba, has been successfully put into the designated orbit.    More
(Source: TASS - Sep 13)

THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD LOOKS LIKE THROUGH THE EYE OF A HURRICANE - As Florida struggles with the floods and winds from Hurricane Irma, another big storm in the Atlantic is being closely watched by meteorologists: Hurricane Jose, which is currently considered Category 2, though it is still too early to tell if it will make landfall. To give some sense of scale to what typically appears as a colorful splotch on maps, meteorologist Antti Lipponen used a satellite to peer straight through the eye of the storm. Through the perspective of the European Space Agency’s satellite Sentinel-2A, the Finnish researcher was able to show a turbulent sea beneath Hurricane Jose.   More
(Source: Quartz - Sep 12)

PROTON-M LAUNCHES FROM BAIKONUR WITH AMAZONAS 5 TELECOM SATELLITE - International Launch Services (ILS) has successfully launched into space its Proton-M rocket carrying the Amazonas 5 communications satellite for Spanish operator Hispasat. The launch was conducted on September 11 at 19:23 GMT (3:23 p.m. EDT) from Site 200/39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch campaign for the mission started on August 8 when the Amazonas 5 satellite arrived at Baikonur aboard an Antonov cargo jet. Ten days later, the Proton-M launch vehicle was shipped to Baikonur by rail.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Insider - Sep 12)

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