SATELLITE FOR SECURE WAR-TIME COMMUNICATIONS GOES UP - Forging a new constellation of ultra-secure communications satellites that will ring the globe to link the president with military forces anywhere on the planet, an Atlas 5 rocket roared to space Friday to continue putting the pieces in place for the warfighter. Counting down to blastoff at 2:42 p.m. EDT (1842 GMT), the million-pound rocket leaped from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 and thundered eastward carrying the second Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, one of the Defense Department's most sophisticated and critical spacecraft. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 6)
SATELLITES AT RISK - NEXT WEEK, the Senate is set to spend considerable time figuring out how to pay for renewing an old campaign gimmick — keeping interest rates for certain federally backed student loans extra low at 3.4 percent. Doing so would be expensive; it would cost the government $6?billion to extend those low rates for just one year. That might not seem like much compared with the entire federal budget, but at a time when Congress has put tight limits on discretionary spending, many other, more worthy programs are fighting for every dollar. More (Source: The Washington Post - May 6)
MILITARY WANTS TO KNOW: WHOSE SATELLITES ARE THOSE? - U.S. military observers can have trouble identifying satellites whizzing overheard in Earth's crowded space lanes. A new Pentagon effort aims to find the unique visual signatures of individual satellites for quick identification, regardless of whether such satellites belong to friend or foe. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hopes such signatures — remotely seen from ground or space sensors — could even help identify different satellites made by the same manufacturer. But it's not easy. More (Source: MSNBC - May 5)
NEXT GALILEO SATELLITES TO LAUNCH AFTER THE SUMMER - The European Commission has announced the launch date of the next pair of ESA-procured Galileo satellites. These will be launched together on a Soyuz from French Guiana on 28 September, joining the two satellites already in orbit. Antonio Tajani, Vice President of the European Commission, responsible for industry and entrepreneurship, announced the launch on 2 May in Brussels, together with Jean Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace, in the presence of industrial leaders involved in the program, and in agreement with ESA’s Director of the Galileo Program and Navigation-related Activities Didier Faivre. More (Source: RedOrbit - May 5)
SPACEX STATION LAUNCH SET FOR MAY 19 - SpaceX has suggested May 19 as the new date for its potentially history-making Falcon 9 rocket launch to the International Space Station, with May 22 as a backup date. The schedule shift provides more time for NASA to review changes in the California-based company's flight software, and also avoids a potential conflict with the planned May 14 launch of three new space station crew members from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. More (Source: MSNBC - May 5)
SPACEX'S HISTORIC SPACE STATION MISSION DELAYED AGAIN - The private spaceflight company SpaceX will likely postpone the planned launch of its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station next week, officials announced May 2. SpaceX was targeting the launch for Monday, May 7, but now will likely shift to a later date, possibly May 10. The unmanned Dragon spacecraft is due to lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. More (Source: Fox News - May 5)
LONG MARCH LAUNCHER BOOSTS TWIN SATELLITES INTO ORBIT - Two satellites for China's Beidou navigation system launched aboard a Long March 3B rocket Sunday, further expanding the space-based positioning network as China eyes global service by 2020. The Beidou constellation, also known as Compass, is China's counterpart to the U.S. Air Force's Global Positioning System, which provides navigation services to military vehicles, precision munitions, civil aviation, personal cars, boats, and search-and-rescue forces. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 2)
SPACEX'S 1ST PRIVATE CAPSULE LAUNCH TO SPACE STATION: HOW IT WILL WORK - On May 7, if all goes well, the private spaceflight company SpaceX will launch the first commercial spaceship ever to visit the International Space Station. But the mission will be like no other U.S. flight to the orbiting laboratory. SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule is due to deliver food, supplies and science experiments to the outpost as a test mission for NASA. More (Source: Space.com - May 2)
INDIA TO FERRY HEAVIEST FOREIGN SATELLITE IN AUGUST - India will ferry two foreign satellites - French and Japanese - on board its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C21) rocket in August this year for a price, said a senior official. "The next rocket launch will be in August. We will be sending our PSLV rocket with French satellite SPOT 6 (800 kg) and a small Japanese satellite weighing around 15 kg. Though the rocket is called PSLV-C21 it will go before PSLV-C20," P.S. Veeraraghavan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), told IANS. More (Source: Zee News - Apr 29)
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