ENGINE FAILURE BEHIND MERIDIAN SATELLITE CRASH - The crash of Russia’s Meridian communication satellite late last year was caused by the destruction of one of the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket’s engines, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, said on Tuesday. “An inter-agency commission has concluded that the reason was an early opening of the combustion section of the rocket’s third stage,” Popovkin said during a meeting dedicated to Russia’s space industry development.    More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Feb 2)

SES RELOCATES SATELLITE TO MEET GROWING CUSTOMER DEMAND - SES S.A. today announced that the SES-3 satellite is being relocated from its former location over North America to Asia, an area experiencing great demand for state-of-the-art, reliable satellite capacity. The SES-3 satellite is being relocated to 108.2 deg East to provide coverage of the Middle East and South Asia regions, where SES experiences growing customer demand. The drift began in mid-December 2011 and the satellite is expected to arrive at its new orbital location on February 6, 2012.    More
(Source: MarketWatch - Feb 2)

GERMAN SATELLITE 'MINUTES FROM CRASHING INTO BEIJING' - A two-and-a-half ton German satellite came within minutes of crashing into Beijing the European Space Agency has disclosed. New calculations by the agency show that if the Rosat satellite had remained aloft for just seven more minutes after re-entering the earth's atmosphere in October it would have plunged into the Chinese capital of 20 million people.    More
(Source: Telegraph.co.uk - Feb 2)

RUSSIA WILL REPLACE SOYUZ FOR NEXT ISS MISSION: SOURCE - Russia will replace the Soyuz spacecraft set to take the next crew to the International Space Station after a fault was found in testing, a space industry source said Wednesday. The Russian space agency had previously said that only a capsule used for the crew's re-entry to Earth would be replaced after tests found it was not hermetically sealed, delaying a mission originally set for March 30.    More
(Source: AFP - Feb 2)

RUSSIA TO DELAY SPACE MISSION DUE TO TECHNICAL PROBLEMS - Russia plans to delay the next mission carrying US and Russian astronauts to the International Space Station by several weeks due to problems with the spaceship's descent vehicle, Interfax news agency quoted an industry source as saying Friday. The expected delay follows a series of technical mishaps that marred Russia's celebration of 50 years last year since Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first human space flight.    More
(Source: Times of India - Jan 30)

SPACE STATION’S ORBIT RAISED TO AVOID COLLISION WITH SPACE JUNK - Specialists of Russia’s Mission Control Center raised the orbit altitude of the International Space Station (ISS) in the early hours of Sunday to prevent a possible collision with a Chinese satellite fragment, a spokesman for the Center said. “The maneuver was performed using Zvezda service module engines,” the spokesman said. The altitude of the ISS orbit was raised by 1.7 kilometers to 391.6 kilometers, he said, adding that the maneuver lasted 64 seconds.    More
(Source: RIA Novosti - Jan 29)

RUSSIA PLANS TO LAUNCH U.S. SATELLITE IN FEBRUARY - Russia is preparing a Proton-M carrier rocket for the launch of the U.S. Sirius FM-6 telecoms satellite, Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said on Thursday. "The launch is tentatively scheduled for February 2012," Roscosmos said. The assembly of the upper stage of the rocket and the testing of a Briz-M booster is being carried out at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan.    More
(Source: Space Daily - Jan 29)

RUSSIAN CARGO SHIP DOCKS AT INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - A robotic Russian cargo ship pulled up to the International Space Station Friday (Jan. 27), delivering tons of fresh fruit, clothing and other vital supplies for the orbiting lab's six-man crew. The Progress 46 cargo ship arrived at the space station at about 7:09 p.m. EST (0009 GMT Jan. 28) after a two-day spaceflight that marked Russia's first space mission of the year.    More
(Source: Huffington Post - Jan 29)

RETIRED SATELLITE'S FALL FROM SPACE WILL EXCEED NASA SAFETY RULES - The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a NASA satellite retired from service Jan. 5, will present a 1-in-1,000 chance of harming someone when it makes an uncontrolled fall from Earth orbit some time after 2014, a level ten times riskier than NASA now requires for re-entering spacecraft, according to an agency spokesperson.    More
(Source: Space.com - Jan 28)

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