MILITARY SATELLITE RELYING ON BACKUP PLAN TO SAVE ITSELF - A rescue plan is being implemented to salvage the U.S. military's pricy new communications satellite despite a serious malfunction that knocked out its main engine and stymied the craft's maneuvering ability. The Advanced Extremely High Frequency 1 spacecraft was launched into a preliminary orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket on August 14 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The United Launch Alliance-built booster performed its job as designed and successfully deployed the 13,420-pound payload into a supersynchronous transfer orbit with a high point of 31,200 miles, low point of 140 miles and inclination of 22.2 degrees. More (Source: Space Flight Now - Aug 31)
NEW LOCKHEED MARTIN SATELLITE FACES ORBIT DELAY AS ENGINE SHUTS DOWN EARLY - The U.S. Air Force is investigating a technical flaw that may keep a new Lockheed Martin Corp. military communications satellite from reaching its required orbit as scheduled, according to service and Pentagon documents. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center formed a team to examine what it’s calling a “maneuver anomaly” to determine why a satellite engine intended to help boost the vehicle into so-called geosynchronous orbit shut down after nine seconds of operation, according to the documents. The engine shut down prematurely during the initial phase of boosting the satellite from its current orbit of about 200 miles to the 22,236 miles it’s supposed to reach by Nov. 12, the Air Force and U.S. Strategic Command said. More (Source: Bloomberg - Aug 30)
CHINESE MAPPING SATELLITE DEPLOYED IN EARTH ORBIT - A Chinese mapping satellite is circling Earth after launching on a Long March rocket Tuesday, according to official media reports. The Tianhui 1 satellite was released in a circular orbit more than 300 miles above Earth following liftoff aboard a Long March 2D booster at 0710 GMT (3:10 a.m. EDT). The 13-story rocket took off from the Jiuquan launching base near the border of northern China's Inner Mongolia and Gansu provinces, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Liftoff occurred at 3:10 p.m. Chinese time. More (Source: Space Flight Now - Aug 26)
EUROPEAN SCIENCE SATELLITE HIT BY GLITCH - A satellite designed to map Earth's gravitational field has been hit by a software glitch and is unable to send its science data back home, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday. The problem began to affect the spacecraft GOCE in late July, Mark Drinkwater, head of mission science at ESA's technical division, the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), told AFP. "The satellite's not transmitting its scientific data because of this anomaly," Drinkwater said from Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Technicians were working on a patch and hope to install it by radio link next month, he said. More (Source: AFP - Aug 24)
IRAN SATELLITE LAUNCH DELAYED - The launch of a new Iranian satellite, which was to take place later this month, has been delayed as the device is still being developed, Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour said. The minister had announced in July that the satellite, Rasad 1 (Observation), which would be Iran's second home-built satellite to be sent into space, would be launched in the last week of August. But Taghipour was cited late on Sunday by state television's website as saying that the satellite, to be used for transmitting images and weather forecasts, will now be launched in the second half of the current Iranian year to March 2011. More (Source: Sydney Morning Herald - Aug 16)
POWER PROBLEM WITH INSAT-4B - The Insat-4B communication satellite is facing a power supply problem leading to 50 percent of its transponders being switched off, parliament was informed Thursday. Replying to question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan said that on July 7, the satellite suffered an anomaly in its power supply from one of the two solar arrays. More (Source: Space Daily - Aug 16)
RISE AND SHINE: ATLAS 5 ROCKET SUCCESSFULLY SOARS AT DAWN - A sophisticated satellite was launched into space today to improve the preeminent path of communications between the president, military commanders and troops on the battlefield, ensuring a survivable line of contact even in hellish scenarios of nuclear warfare. The inaugural spacecraft in the Advanced Extremely High Frequency program rode a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket away from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 at 7:07 a.m. EDT. Three solid-fueled boosters mounted to the launcher's kerosene-fed first stage provided a substantial kick in speed and power coming off the pad, sending the 197-foot-tall, million-pound Atlas blazing a trail toward the east. More (Source: Space Flight Now - Aug 16)
NASA'S FASTSAT SATELLITE ARRIVES AT KODIAK, ALASKA, LAUNCH COMPLEX - NASA's first microsatellite designed to create a capability that increases opportunities for secondary, scientific and technology payloads, or rideshares, to be flown at lower cost than before has arrived at Kodiak Island, Alaska, to begin final launch preparations. The Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite, or FASTSAT, arrived at the Kodiak Launch Complex on Aug. 10 from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Following final checkout, the just under 400-pounds satellite will be integrated on a Minotaur IV launch vehicle as one of three secondary payloads. More (Source: Space Ref - Aug 13)
PERSEID METEOR SHOWER TONIGHT: IT'S A SPECTACULAR TROUBLEMAKER - The Perseid meteor shower tonight, which peaks during the early hours of Friday morning, is widely regarded as perhaps the most consistently spectacular meteor shower of the year. But it also is the only meteor shower known to have killed a satellite and delayed a space-shuttle launch. And as recently as last year, it may have knocked the Landsat 5 Earth-observing satellite off its rocker temporarily. Enter Bill Cooke, who heads the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. His small shop is the meteor-shower equivalent to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. More (Source: Christian Science Monitor - Aug 13)
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