EUROPEAN SOYUZ LAUNCHES SMALLGEO SATELLITE FOR HISPASAT - European launch provider Arianespace completed its first launch of the year Jan. 27, orbiting the first SmallGEO satellite for Spanish satellite operator Hispasat. In addition to being the first SmallGEO satellite to reach orbit, the mission is also the first to use a Soyuz from French Guiana to launch a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit. Previous Soyuz launches from the complex in Sinnamary, French Guiana, flew missions to low and medium Earth orbit. Built by Bremen, Germany-based OHB Systems AG, Hispasat-36W-1 is the first of nine SmallGEO satellites the manufacturer has received contracts to build.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Jan 29)

JAPANESE CARGO CRAFT DEPARTS SPACE STATION - Japan’s sixth HTV supply ship departed the International Space Station on Friday and headed for a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific with trash and disused batteries from the research lab, but engineers will first use the spacecraft for a pioneering experiment to investigate a new way to remove space junk from orbit. The cargo freighter was detached from the space station’s Harmony module shortly after 6 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) Friday, then released from the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm at 10:46 a.m. EST (1546 GMT) under the command of flight engineer Thomas Pesquet.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jan 28)

ARIANESPACE’S FIRST 2017 MISSION OPENS A FAST-PACED YEAR OF LAUNCH ACTIVITY - Departing at the exact planned liftoff moment of 10:03:34 p.m. (local time in French Guiana), Soyuz flew a 32-minute profile to release its satellite passenger into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) – the first mission that Arianespace’s medium-lift Soyuz has performed for a GTO deployment while operating from the Spaceport. Today’s success was Soyuz’ 16th launch from French Guiana since it began service at the Spaceport in 2011, and was designated Flight VS16 in Arianespace’s launcher family numbering system. The workhorse Soyuz vehicle previously delivered payloads on Spaceport missions to circular Earth orbits, low-Earth orbits, Sun-Synchronous orbits, and an elliptical orbit for an Earth escape trajectory.    More
(Source: Space Ref - Jan 28)

DARPA SATELLITE-SERVICING PROJECT COMES UNDER CONGRESSIONAL FIRE - The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is being asked to reconsider a satellite-servicing demonstration mission it plans to put under contract this year. Four U.S. lawmakers complained to DARPA and the Pentagon this week that the project appears to run afoul of a national space policy that discourages the government from developing space systems and services it could otherwise buy from the private sector. DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office received proposals last year from companies wanting to collaborate with the agency on the development and demonstration of a robotic spacecraft built to service government and commercial satellites stationed in geosynchronous orbit.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Jan 27)

SPACESHIP READY FOR RELEASE AS CREW STUDIES VISION - The Expedition 50 crew is getting ready for Friday morning’s release of Japan’s sixth cargo craft to visit the International Space Station. The station residents are also continuing to explore how their eyes adapt to living in space for months at a time. The Kounotori HTV-6 resupply ship, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is being disconnected from station systems today as it prepares for its departure Friday at 10:30 a.m. EST. Overnight, ground controllers will operate the Canadarm2 and maneuver the HTV-6 away from the Harmony module where it is attached.   More
(Source: NASA - Jan 27)

RUSSIA SAYS TECHNICAL CHECKS MAY DELAY SOME SPACE ROCKET LAUNCHES - Russia's space agency said on Wednesday it had ordered extra checks to be made on its Proton-M rockets, meaning it might be forced to delay some satellite launches this year. Roscosmos, the Russian equivalent of NASA, made the announcement after the Kommersant daily reported that manufacturing problems had been detected in some Proton-M rockets and that some launches were likely to be delayed by several months "in a best case scenario." European, U.S. and Asian firms rely heavily on Russia to launch their commercial satellites, and a Roscosmos source told Kommersant that Moscow planned to launch 27 rockets this year, eight of which were Proton-Ms.   More
(Source: Reuters - Jan 26)

ESA TEAMS RESPOND TO DEBRIS RISK - For the past few days, experts from ESA's Space Debris Office at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, have been assessing a conjunction (read: collision) forecast issued by the US armed forces’ Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) located at Vandenberg Air Force base in California. JSpOC receive data from the American space tracking radars and telescopes, among other sources, and through a long-standing data-sharing agreement, alert ESA whenever a conjunction involving one of our missions appears possible. Space debris are now one of the principle threats to orbiting satellites. We estimate that an ever-increasing cloud of more than 750 000 dangerous debris objects larger than 1 cm are in Earth orbit with the potential to damage or destroy intact satellites, creating yet more fragments.   More
(Source: ESA - Jan 26)

A PRIVATE SPACE STATION MIGHT BE BORN FROM THE ISS - What's going to happen to the International Space Station (ISS) after it is retired? While international agreements work out how long the station will last after its planned budget end in 2024, one startup private company has a vision that could build a new station on pieces of the old one. Called Axiom Space, its chief executive is Michael Suffredini, the former NASA program manager of the ISS. The company has ambitious plans to send up a module in 2020 to attach to the space station, then to remove that module when the space station program ends. Depending on what the partners want, Axiom could even remove pieces of the ISS along with its own module.   More
(Source: Seeker - Jan 26)

SPACE JUNK COULD TAKE OUT A EUROPEAN SATELLITE THIS WEEK - A European Space Agency satellite risks colliding with a piece of space debris about 15 centimeters (a half-foot) long this week, forcing ESA's flight control to plan a rare evasive maneuver. A piece of an old Russian satellite called Cosmos-375 is forecast to miss Swarm-B, one of ESA's three Swarm satellites that measure Earth's magnetic fields, by just over the length of a football field. But the margin of error for that forecast is around 1,000 meters (3,280 feet or more like three football fields).   More
(Source: CNET - Jan 25)

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