ARIANE 5 LAUNCHES ON DUAL-PAYLOAD COMMERCIAL MISSION - Kicking off a busy sequence of launches from the Europe's spaceport in the jungle of French Guiana, an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off Saturday and put two satellites in perfect orbits to expand direct-to-home television programming in Eastern Europe and broadcast football matches at this summer's World Cup in Brazil. The heavy-lift launcher, weighing 1.7 million pounds with full fuel tanks, fired its hydrogen-fed main engine and solid rocket boosters at 2204 GMT (6:04 p.m. EDT) to climb away from the ELA-3 launch pad at the Guiana Space Center near Kourou, French Guiana.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 24)

FRESH GLONASS NAVIGATION SATELLITE LAUNCHED BY RUSSIA - Russia launched a Soyuz rocket Sunday with a fresh satellite for the country's Glonass navigation system, which broadcasts positioning and timing signals to Russian military forces and civilian users worldwide. The Soyuz 2-1b rocket lifted off at 2254 GMT (6:54 p.m. EDT) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military-run facility in the Arkhangelsk region about 500 miles north of Moscow.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 24)

CHINESE SATELLITE SPOTS OBJECT IN SEARCH AREA FOR MISSING JETLINER - A Chinese satellite has spotted an object in the southern Indian Ocean in an area that is the focus of a multinational effort to find the Malaysia Airlines airliner that disappeared on March 8, the Chinese authorities said Saturday. The object is about is about 74 feet by 43 feet (22.5 meters by 13 meters), China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said on its website. It was spotted on Tuesday about 75 miles, or 120 kilometers, to the south and west of objects seen two days earlier by a commercial satellite.   More
(Source: New York Time - Mar 23)

OBJECTS SPOTTED BY SATELLITE ARE 'BEST LEAD' IN MALAYSIA AIRLINES SEARCH - Search crews were scouring the southern Indian Ocean today after two objects that may be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight were spotted by satellite, officials said today. Officials described the sighting as the "best lead we have right now" and said four aircraft and an Australian Navy ship were sent to the region off the coast of Australia. In addition, a Norwegian car carrier, the Hoegh St. Petersburg, was diverted into the search area which is searching through the night using lights and binocular.    More
(Source: ABC News - Mar 21)

ASTRA 5B SATELLITE LAUNCH SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 21 - SES S.A. announced today that Arianespace has scheduled the launch of its new satellite ASTRA 5B for March 21, 2014. The satellite will be launched into space from the European Space Centre in French Guiana on board an Ariane 5 ECA rocket between 19:05 pm and 20:02 pm local time (23.05 -- 00.02 CET; 18.05 -- 19.02 EDT). ASTRA 5B was built by Airbus Defence and Space (formerly Astrium) in Toulouse, France, using a Eurostar E3000 platform. The multi-mission satellite will be located at 31.5 degrees East and carry Ku and Ka-band payloads for the delivery of high-performance Direct-to-Home (DTH) in Eastern Europe and the neighboring markets.    More
(Source: Wall Street Journal - Mar 20)

ATV GEORGES LEMAITRE SET TO TEST NEW RENDEZVOUS SENSORS - ESA’s space freighter ATV Georges Lemaitre, set for launch this summer, will test new rendezvous sensors in space as it approaches the International Space Station. ESA has set its sights on allowing future spacecraft to rendezvous with "uncooperative" targets, such as orbiting debris or a Mars sample capsule. The LIRIS demonstrator – short for Laser InfraRed Imaging Sensors – on the last Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV, is the first step towards an uncooperative rendezvous in space.    More
(Source: Red Orbit - Mar 20)

SEARCHERS RELYING ON SATELLITE DATA TO LOCATE MISSING MALAYSIA AIRLINES PLANE - Finding a missing Malaysia Airlines plane may hinge on whether searchers can narrow down where they need to look using satellite data that is inexact and has never been used for that purpose before, search and rescue experts say. Authorities now believe someone on board the Boeing 777 shut down part of the aircraft's messaging system about the same time the plane with 239 people on board disappeared from civilian radar. But an Inmarsat satellite was able to automatically connect with a portion of the messaging system that remained in operation, similar to a phone call that just rings because no one is on the other end to pick it up and provide information.    More
(Source: Fox News - Mar 18)

SPACE STATION MOVES AWAY FROM SPACE JUNK - The International Space Station had to sidestep a piece of space junk. Experts aren’t sure how big the junk is. It’s from a Russian weather satellite launched in 1979. After the maneuver, it was determined the debris would have posed no threat. NASA says it preferred playing it safe.   More
(Source: Washington Post - Mar 17)

RUSSIAN PROTON ROCKET LAUNCHES CARRYING TWO TELECOMS SATS - A Russian Proton-M rocket took off early Sunday morning from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur space center carrying two Russian telecommunications satellites, the Russian space agency said. The rocket’s payload, the Express-AT1 and Express-AT2 satellites, were successfully inserted into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nine hours after the launch by the Proton’s upper stage, the Briz-M.   More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Mar 16)

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