COMMUNICATION SATELLITE GSAT-17 LAUNCHED FROM FRENCH GUIANA - GSAT-17, the country's newly launched communication satellite, will soon join the fleet of 17 working Indian communication satellites in space and augment their overall capacity to some extent. The 3,477-kg spacecraft was released into a temporary orbit in space as planned at 2.45 a.m. [a.m.] IST on Thursday about 39 minutes after launch from the European space port of Kourou in French Guiana. It was dusk at the South American near-equatorial space port. GSAT-17 was sent up as the second passenger on the European booster, Ariane-5 ECA VA-238, according to ISRO and the European launch company Arianespace.   More
(Source: The Hindu - Jun 29)

SATELLITE MEGA-CONSTELLATION PRODUCTION BEGINS - European aerospace giant Airbus and its partner, OneWeb, have begun the production of a satellite mega-constellation. The network will comprise at least 600 spacecraft in the first instance, but could eventually encompass more than 2,000. The aim is to deliver broadband links from orbit to every corner of the globe. In particular, the project wants every school to have a connection. Building so large a constellation requires a step-change in the manufacture of satellites - especially for Airbus. It can take Europe’s biggest space company many months and hundreds of millions of dollars to build some of today’s specialist platforms. But for the OneWeb venture, it is all about high volume and low cost.    More
(Source: BBC News - Jun 28)

SPACEX WILL TRY FOR THIRD FALCON 9 LAUNCH IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS - After back-to-back launches last weekend, SpaceX could launch its next Falcon 9 mission as soon as Sunday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a high-power Intelsat communications satellite. Liftoff Sunday will hinge on the ability of SpaceX’s launch team to prepare KSC’s launch pad 39A for another flight after the successful June 23 blastoff of a Falcon 9 booster with the first Bulgarian-owned communications satellite. A customary hold-down hotfire test of the Falcon 9’s nine Merlin 1D engines is scheduled as soon as Thursday.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 28)

SATELLITE CARRYING LASER-OPTICAL DATA RELAY SERVICE AND HYLAS-3 KA- PAYLOAD FACES NEW DELAY - A long-delayed satellite carrying a laser-optical payload for intersatellite links and Ka-band broadband for Africa faces further delays because of an anomaly in its Ka-band system, government and industry officials said. The satellite, called EDRS-C by the European Space Agency, Airbus Defense and Space and the European Commission, and Hylas-3 by commercial satellite fleet operator Avanti Communications, which will operate the Ka-band service, is unlikely to launch before mid-2018, officials said. EDRS-C/Hylas-3 is important for Airbus because it will extend the coverage and provide backup for the EDRS-A payload now in orbit on fleet operator Eutelsat’s Eutelsat 9A satellite at 9 degrees east in geostationary orbit.   More
(Source: Space Intel Report - Jun 27)

CREW PREPS FOR SOLAR ARRAY JETTISON AND DRAGON DEPARTURE - An experimental solar array demonstration was jettisoned while the Expedition 52 crew continued preparing the SpaceX Dragon for its release on Sunday. The three crew members also studied how microgravity impacts their bodies. Following a week of successful science operations on the experiment for the Roll-Out Solar Array (ROSA), attempts to retract the array were unsuccessful. The ISS Mission Management Team met Monday morning and made the decision to jettison ROSA directly from its location at the end of the space station’s robotic arm, where it remained fully deployed in a normal configuration   More
(Source: NASA - Jun 27)

AUSTRALIAN CUBESATS LOST IN SPACE FOUND AGAIN WITH HELP FROM DUTCH TELESCOPE, HAM RADIO OPERATORS - Imagine you've spent half a decade building satellites to study a little-known part of the Earth's atmosphere. They're the first Australian-built satellites to go into space for more than a decade. You watch them launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida with great fanfare. They're deployed from the International Space Station in May. Then … nothing. Radio silence. Your efforts appear to have resulted in space junk — invisible, unresponsive bricks hurtling at 27,000km/hr, 400km above the Earth's surface. But this is not a story about loss.   More
(Source: ABC Online - Jun 27)

SPACEX LAUNCHES AND LANDS SECOND FALCON 9 ROCKET IN TWO DAYS - Two days after launching a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, SpaceX sent another mission into orbit Sunday from California’s Central Coast with 10 new satellites for Iridium’s voice and data relay network. Like Friday’s flight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Falcon 9’s first stage plunged back through the atmosphere and made a propulsive vertical landing on a barge stationed several hundred miles downrange from the launch site.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jun 27)

SPACEX DRAGON AND FALCON 9 ROCKET PHOTOBOMB EACH OTHER'S SELFIES IN SPACE - It's official: SpaceX's rockets and spaceships have caught the selfie bug in the final frontier. When SpaceX launched a Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station this month, the spacecraft popped up in a "selfie" taken by the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched the ship into orbit. "Dragon photobombs stage 2 before heading to Space Station earlier this month," SpaceX representatives wrote in a Twitter post late Monday (June 19). In the photo, the Dragon spacecraft appears as a distant interloper in an otherwise picturesque scene of the Earth and Falcon 9 second stage engine on June 3.   More
(Source: Space.com - Jun 26)

SECRET RUSSIAN SATELLITE LAUNCHED FROM PLESETSK COSMODROME - A modified version of Russia’s Soyuz rocket launched Friday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a spaceport on the edge of the Russian Arctic, with a military satellite whose mission is shrouded in mystery. The Soyuz 2-1v rocket lifted off at 1804 GMT (3:04 p.m. EDT; 9:04 p.m. Moscow time) from Pad 4 at Site 43 at Plesetsk, a military-run spaceport around 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region. Russia announced the successful launch in a statement posted on the Russian Defense Ministry’s website late Friday.   More
(Source: SpaceFligtht Now - Jun 25)

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