EUROPEAN BROADCASTING SATELLITE LAUNCHED BY CHINA - A French communications satellite destined to serve markets in a swath from Europe to the Indian Ocean launched on top of a Chinese Long March rocket Friday. The spacecraft will be operated by Eutelsat, a leading international communications satellite owner based in Paris. Named W3C, the platform carries Ku-band and Ka-band transponders for television broadcasting and data services, according to Eutelsat.    More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Oct 10)

CANADIAN SATELLITE MALFUNCTION LEAVES THOUSANDS WITHOUT COMMUNICATIONS - A satellite malfunction left thousands of people across parts of rural northern Canada without communications services and grounded dozens of flights Thursday (Oct. 6), according to Canadian press reports. Officials with the Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat Canada said the malfunction began at 6:36 a.m. EDT (1036 GMT), when its Anik F2 communications satellite suffered a "technical anomaly." The glitch affected satellite-served communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut territory, according to Canadian communications provider Northwestel.    More
(Source: Space.com - Oct 8)

METEOR SHOWER THIS WEEKEND: SPACE STATION AT RISK? - Draconids could be a meteor storm, threatening satellites, expert says. The usually humdrum Draconid meteor shower is set to go into overdrive this weekend: Astronomers predict that Saturday's sky show may be a not just a shower but a storm. If the forecasts are correct, the Draconids could see peak rates of up to 600 meteors an hour—an outburst that would far outpace even the crowd-pleasing August Perseids. (See Perseid pictures: "Meteor Shower Dazzles Every August.") The possibility of a meteor storm has NASA and other spacecraft operators keeping keen eyes on how the Draconids might affect the International Space Station (ISS) and other satellites currently in Earth's orbit.    More
(Source: National Geographic - Oct 7)

HOW TO SEE CHINA'S NEW SPACE LAB IN NIGHT SKY - Over the last 13 years skywatchers have had the opportunity to watch the world's largest man-made object in space, the International Space Station, take shape. As the space station gradually grew in size, observers here on Earth could see it become steadily brighter as it sailed across the twilight sky. Occasionally, it would be accompanied by a second object, usually the space shuttle, ferrying astronauts and cosmonauts to the station or back to Earth. With the construction of the space station finally completed this summer, as well as the end of the 30-year-old space shuttle program, attention now turns to a new space facility currently orbiting the Earth.    More
(Source: MSNBC - Oct 6)

SOYUZ LAUNCH RESTORES RUSSIAN NAVIGATION SYSTEM - A fresh satellite for Russia's Glonass navigation network launched aboard a modernized Soyuz rocket Sunday on the first flight of the workhorse booster since a mishap doomed a mission in August. The Soyuz 2-1b rocket lifted off at 2015 GMT (4:15 p.m. EDT) Sunday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Launch occurred at 12:15 a.m. Moscow time. The rocket's three core stages finished their work in less than 10 minutes, then a Fregat upper stage fired three times to reach a circular orbit almost 12,000 miles above Earth.    More
(Source: Space Flight Now - Oct 3)

RUSSIA LAUNCHES FIRST SOYUZ ROCKET SINCE AUGUST CRASH - A Russian Soyuz-2 rocket launched a GLONASS navigation satellite on Sunday, the defence ministry said, in the first launch since a freighter carried by the flagship vehicle crashed into Earth in August. Russia has "successfully completed the launch of a Soyuz-2 rocket with the GLONASS-M (satellite) at 0015 (2015 GMT)," Colonel Alexei Zolotukhin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. The satellite was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome 800 kilometres (500 miles) south of Moscow.    More
(Source: AFP - Oct 3)

HISTORIC SPACEX FLIGHT TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION DELAYED UNTIL DECEMBER - Private space company SpaceX has announced that the landmark flight of its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station will have to be postponed until at least December 19th, 2011. The flight, which would mark the first time a privately owned spacecraft docked with the ISS, was originally slated for November 3rd of this year.   More
(Source: Geekosystem - Oct 3)

OBAMA UNDER FIRE OVER SPACE PLANS - High-profile critics fear President Barack Obama's commercial overhaul of human spaceflight is going nowhere and could mark the end of half a century of US supremacy among the stars and planets. "We will have no American access to, and return from, low Earth orbit and the International Space Station for an unpredictable length of time in the future," Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, warned lawmakers at a recent hearing.    More
(Source: AFP - Oct 3)

2 TINY SATELLITES FROM USU PART OF ROCKET LAUNCH SET FOR END OF OCTOBER - Imagine a spacecraft small enough to fit in your hand. It's a reality, part of a trend in the space business that takes advantage of something we all benefit from every day when we use our cellphones and iPads. "We're essentially using the same kinds of technologies that you find in cellphones and in iPads and consumer electronics today, which has allowed us to make a very capable, very small spacecraft," said professor Charles Swenson, of Utah State University.    More
(Source: Deseret News - Oct 2)

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