TWO MORE GALILEO NAVIGATION SATELLITES PRIMED FOR FLIGHT - The next pair of spacecraft to join Europe’s Galileo navigation system are positioned for liftoff late Thursday aboard a Soyuz rocket. The photos below show the arrival of the satellites in French Guiana in late July from their factory at OHB System in Bremen, Germany, fueling of the craft by technicians in special hazmat suits, and attachment of the twin satellites on a dual-payload dispenser. The package was then lowered atop a Russian-made Fregat-MT upper stage and enclosed within the Soyuz rocket’s payload fairing. Workers next added decals to the nose cone with the mission logos, then transferred the composite structure to the Soyuz launch pad late Monday for mating with the rocket. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 10)
SPACE STATION CROSSES SUN'S FACE IN STUNNING PHOTO FROM EARTH - An amazing new photo shows the International Space Station crossing the sun's face. The picture, a composite of five images taken Sunday (Sept. 6) from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia by NASA photographer Bill Ingalls, captures a "transit" of the International Space Station (ISS) across the solar disk. Such transits don't last very long, because the space station zooms around Earth at more than 17,000 mph (27,000 km/h) — the $100 billion complex completes one lap around our planet once every 90 minutes or so. More (Source: NBC News - Sep 9)
SAUDI ARABIA TO LAUNCH A SMALL SATELLITE EVERY TWO YEARS - Saudi Arabia will launch a small satellite into orbit every two or three years under a 12-year space program devised by King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), it was announced here on Sunday. Prince Turki Bin Saud Bin Mohammed, president of KACST, made the announcement during a speech at a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the launch of the spaceship Discovery by NASA. Prince Turki said KACST is scheduled to implement its satellite program starting from 2019 through 2020... More (Source: Al-Arabiya - Sep 8)
ISRO POSITIONS MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE GSAT-6 IN FINAL ORBIT - GSAT-6, the country's latest communication satellite has been successfully positioned in its orbital slot, Indian Space Research Organization said today. "GSAT-6 has been successfully positioned in its orbital slot of 83 Deg E and collocated with INSAT 4A, GSAT 12, GSAT 10 and IRNSS1C today morning, after carrying out four drift arresting maneuvers," ISRO said. ISRO had successfully launched GSAT-6, having an indigenous cryogenic engine, on-board GSLV-D6 rocket from the spaceport at Sriharikota on August 27. After the launch ISRO had performed successive orbit raising operation of the satellite and had also deployed the unfurlable antenna (UFA) successfully. More (Source: NDTV - Sep 7)
SCOTT KELLY TAKES OVER AS SPACE STATION COMMANDER - In a brief ceremony Saturday, veteran cosmonaut Gennadi Padalka, the most experienced spaceman on or off the planet, turned over command of the International Space Station to NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who along with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko is midway through a nearly yearlong stay in orbit. Padalka served as commander of the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft that carried Kelly and Kornienko into orbit last March 27 and he plans to return to Earth aboard the same ferry ship Sept. 11 to close out his fifth space mission. More (Source: CBS News - Sep 7)
THREE HAM RADIO LAUNCHES PLANNED BY BEIJING - Beijing is thought to be planning three separate launches of satellites carrying amateur radio payloads in the next few weeks. The launches were highlighted on the Social Media site Weibo and have been discussed on a space flight forum. On September 19, 2015 the new CZ-6 rocket is expected to launch from Taiyuan carrying nine satellites with amateur radio payloads. Six XW-2 satellites will carry 435/145 MHz SSB/CW transponders. More (Source: AMSAT-UK - Sep 7)
SPACEX IS WORKING ON A 'PIZZA BOX' THAT SHOULD SCARE YOUR INTERNET COMPANY - Bringing cheap, high-speed internet access to every inch of the Earth would change the world as we know it. And probably anger your internet company. In January, entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that's exactly what he intends to do with his rocket company SpaceX. The idea is to launch 4,000 internet-providing satellites into orbit by 2030. Writer Tim Urban sat down with a top SpaceX engineer to learn more about how this game-changing satellite network will work. More (Source: Tech Insider - Sep 6)
ASTRONAUT SNAPS STUNNING LIGHTNING STRIKE SHOT FROM SPACE STATION - Kjell Lindgren shared this image on the internet earlier this week, which shows a lightning strike that reflected off the solar panels of the International Space Station. nternational Space Station astronaut Kjell Lindgren struck photography gold earlier this week when he captured a picture of a lightning strike on Earth, which lit up the solar panels of the International Space Station. Lindgren took the picture when the ISS was flying over the Pacific Ocean, and later uploaded it to his Twitter account. More (Source: Sputnik International - Sep 6)
HOW TO KILL A SATELLITE—AND WHY YOU’D WANT TO DO IT - Odds are you wouldn’t care much if a team of researchers told you they’d mastered a multi-objective optimization problem to create a reliable orbit propagator (with the help of resonant tesseral harmonics, of course. I mean, duh). Odds are better that you’d pay attention, however, if they told you that what they’d actually done was reduce the risk that you’ll be clobbered by a flaming piece of space junk one day. So let’s go with that second explanation, because that’s what an international team of researchers have accomplished, according to a study just published on sciencedirect.com. More (Source: TIME - Sep 5)
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