IN AN EERIE SCENE, CHINESE VILLAGERS VISIT ROCKET CRASH SITE - The expended first stage of a Long March rocket tumbled into a forested region of southwestern China a few minutes after successfully blasting off Dec. 31 with a Chinese weather satellite, and photographers were there to capture the booster’s fall back to Earth. The images released on the website of the state-owned China News Service show the rocket’s descent and crumpled debris along a rural roadside near Fuquan, a small city in southwestern China’s Guizhou province. The crash site more than 300 miles east of the rocket’s launch pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Jan 5)

SOUTH KOREAN SATELLITE FACES COLLISION WITH SPACE JUNK - A South Korean geological monitoring satellite is on course to come within close hazardous proximity with space debris, Yonhap reports. The South Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning specialists are preparing measures to avert a highly probable collision that could be fatal for the Science and Technology Satellite 3. They will try to change the spacecraft’s altitude so that it will dodge the space junk. US scientists were first to figure out the satellite’s upcoming collision and raised the alarm, warning their South Korean colleagues on Friday, Arirang conveys.   More
(Source: Sputnik International - Jan 4)

NAVY PREPARES FOR COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE LAUNCH - Navy military and civilian engineers are preparing the latest military communications satellite for a planned Jan. 20 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The satellite is part of MUOS, or Mobile User Objective System, which operates like a smartphone network from space, vastly improving secure satellite communications for mobile U.S. forces.   More
(Source: Product Design & Development - Jan 3)

CHINA LAUNCHES METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE FENGYUN-II 08 - China successfully launched Fengyun-II 08, its meteorological satellite, at 9:02 a.m. on Wednesday from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The satellite will collect meteorological, maritime and hydrological data; and transmit information that will be used for weather forecasting and environment monitoring. Both the Long March 3A rocket, which was used to propel the satellite into space, and the satellite were made by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.   More
(Source: Xinhua - Jan 1)

SPACE STATION CREW GETS TO CELEBRATE NEW YEAR'S EVE 16 TIMES - Recovering from one New Year's Eve can be bad enough. Imagine experiencing 16 of them — all in one day. Such is the case for the crew on the International Space Station, which is in orbit about 220 miles above Earth. In one orbital day, as the space station zooms around the globe at 17,500 miles an hour, the crew will pass 16 times over a part of the planet where the clock is striking midnight. No need for a designated driver, however: Cmdr. Barry "Butch" Wilmore and his crew, which includes NASA's Terry Virts, Russian cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samoukutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, plan to celebrate with fruit juice toasts, NASA says. The new year starts officially for the crew at 7 p.m. EST Jan. 31, which is midnight by the Universal Time Clock (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).    More
(Source: NBC News - Jan 1)

ESA TO TEST NEW GALILEO SATELLITE - According to an ESA statement, the agency has received its next Galileo satellite from the German manufacturer OHB, in Bremen. The satellite was carried by truck and encased in an environmentally-controlled container. It arrived at the cleanroom of ESTEC, the ESA’s technical facility in the Netherlands, on December 18. The satellite, dubbed Flight Model 6 (FM06), will undergo a round of tests before being launched into Earth orbit. At ESTEC, FM06 will endure simulated aspects of the space environment, including an acoustic chamber, shaker tables, and anechoic and vacuum chambers. If FM06 succeeds in its evaluation, it will be flown to Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.   More
(Source: The Space Reporter - Dec 31)

PROTON-M CARRIER ROCKET PUTS ASTRA-2G SATELLITE IN INTERIM ORBIT - The Proton-M carrier rocket which took off from the Baikonur space launch facility in Kazakhstan early on Sunday has put the Astra-2G satellite in the interim orbit, the press service of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) told TASS.“The satellite is to enter the calculated orbit at 09:49 Moscow time on December 28,” Roskosmos said. The Astra-2G communications satellite manufactured by the Airbus Defense and Space Company on order from the SES satellite communication operator (Luxembourg) is expected to transmit signals to the European countries, Western Africa and the Near and Middle East.   More
(Source: ITAR-TASS - Dec 28)

CHINESE MILITARY SPY SATELLITE DEPLOYED IN ORBIT - China launched a Long March 4B rocket Saturday to deploy a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit 300 miles above Earth. The Yaogan 26 satellite lifted off at 0322 GMT Saturday (11:22 p.m. EST Friday) from the Taiyuan space center in northern China’s Shanxi province, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Liftoff was at 11:22 a.m. Beijing time. Chinese state media did not announce the launch in advance, keeping with customary practice for rocket launches with Chinese military satellites.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 28)

FY-2C SATELLITE SUCCESSFULLY DEORBITED - It is reported that from December 10 to 13, FY-2C satellite has been successfully deorbited. FY-2C was the first operation application satellite of FY-2 satellites and the first geostationary meteorological satellite achieved continuous and stable operation in-orbit. It was launched in October 19, 2004 and stopped operation in November 25, 2009. After that, the satellite had been in backup status. The deorbited work was officially started at 10:00 a.m. of December 10 and finished on December 13. After deorbiting, all instruments of the satellite were closed. The whole process and the results met our mitigation specifications of space debris and IADC tasks.   More
(Source: Xinhua - Dec 27)

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