CHINA TO LAUNCH SECOND AFRICAN SATELLITE - China Great Wall Industry Corp will launch the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first satellite, which will also be developed by China, before the end of 2015, according to a contract signed on Saturday. The Chinese company is the country's only authorised provider of commercial satellite launch services for international clients. The contract for CongoSat 1, a communications satellite to be developed and manufactured by the China Academy of Space Technology for the National Network of Satellite Telecommunications of the African country, was inked in Zhuhai, Guangdong province.    More
(Source: AsiaOne - Nov 18)

SATELLITE DELAYS PROMPT CANADIAN DEFENSE CONCERNS - Canada's military defense capabilities are at risk due to a predicted two-year delay of a new fleet of Earth-watching radar satellites, critics say. But the country's defense department maintains it has a backup plan. The delayed Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) consists of three satellites meant to replace Radarsat-2, a five-year-old satellite that probes Canada's landmass, and that of other countries, with radar signals. Radarsat-2 is expected to last until 2015, and potentially longer.    More
(Source: NBCNews.com - Nov 18)

SPACE JUNK PASSES ISS AT SAFE DISTANCE - A scheduled debris avoidance maneuver was cancelled after tracking data showed that an unknown piece of space debris would pass by the International Space Station (ISS) at a safe distance, NASA officials have announced. The decision to forgo the maneuver, which would have steered the ISS clear of the space junk’s path, was made by American and Russian flight controllers after they received updated tracking data revealing that the debris would miss the station by 1.7 miles — placing it “in the ‘green’ regime, a safe distance away from the complex, and much further from the station than previous tracking passes displayed,” the US space agency said in a statement.    More
(Source: RedOrbit - Nov 18)

RUSSIA RESTORES COMMS WITH SPACE STATION AFTER ROADWORKS CUT CABLE - Russia restored its communications with the International Space Station and satellites this morning after repairing a cable in Moscow that had been damaged during roadworks, Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced. Roadworks in Moscow actually interrupted space traffic yesterday as an accidentally severed cable cut Russia's communication links with its space hardware overnight.    More
(Source: Register - Nov 16)

SOYUZ BOOSTS MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE - Russia launched a Soyuz rocket Wednesday with a military communications satellite to link ground forces, ships and aircraft in the Arctic and Siberia. Liftoff occurred at 3:42 p.m. Moscow time. The rocket flew in the Soyuz 2-1a configuration with a digital flight control system and an enlarged payload fairing.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 16)

AIR FORCE RECEIVES BIDS FOR DEBRIS-TRACKING SPACE FENCE - Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have submitted bids to the U.S. Air Force for construction of a network of radars to scan the sky and detect small fragments of space debris with unprecedented precision. The defense contractors are competing for a contract worth up to $3.5 billion to build the radars under the Air Force's Space Fence program, which aims for a ten-fold improvement in space tracking capability over the Air Force Space Surveillance System radar network, which has been operational since 1961.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 16)

RUSSIA LOSES CONTACT WITH SATELLITES, INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Russia on Wednesday lost the ability to send commands to most of its satellites and its segment of the International Space Station following a power cable failure near Moscow, RIA Novosti reported. The state news agency said the power cut may also delay the planned November 19 return to Earth of three ISS members who are completing their six-month mission on board the floating international space lab.    More
(Source: NDTV - Nov 14)

AIR SOYUZ LANDING COVERAGE TO BE AIRED BY NASA TELEVISION - NASA Television will provide live coverage as three of the crew members on the International Space Station come back to Earth Sunday, Nov. 18. Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA, Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko will undock their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft from the station, heading for a pre-dawn landing in Kazakhstan, northeast of the remote town of Arkalyk at 7:53 p.m. CST (7:53 a.m. Kazakhstan time on Nov. 19).    More
(Source: RedOrbit - Nov 14)

ATMOSPHERIC CO2 RISKS INCREASING SPACE JUNK: STUDY - A build-up of carbon dioxide in the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere risks causing a faster accumulation of man-made space junk and resulting in more collisions, scientists said on Sunday. While it causes warming on Earth, CO2 conversely cools down the atmosphere and contracts its outermost layer, the thermosphere, where many satellites including the International Space Station (ISS) operate, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.    More
(Source: Space Daily - Nov 12)

Previous Next