News on key developments at SupremeSAT, and general news on the Space and Satellite industry from across the web
Rocket: Atlas V; Payload: CST-100 Starliner; Date: 20 December 2019, 1136 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The Boeing-made capsule was successfully placed onto a suborbital trajectory as planned. Owing to a yet not fully explained failure, the uncrewed vessel burnt more fuel than planned on its way to a stable orbit…
Rocket: Chang Zheng 4B; Payload: CBERS-4A (China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A), eight smallsats; Date: 20 December 2019, 0322 UTC; Launch site: Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China. The main payload was deployed into a 615 km x 635 km x 97.98° Sun-synchronous orbit. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019122001
Canada’s Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) is now operational, and federal government departments will start using RCM data to support programmes and services to Canadians. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019122002
Rocket: Soyuz ST-A/Fregat; Payload: COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation, CHEOPS (Characterising Exoplanet Satellite) and three auxiliary payloads: EyeSat, OPS-SAT and ANGELS; Date: 18 December 2019, 0854 UTC; Launch site: Sinnamary, French Guiana. The launcher flew a four-hour-plus profile to release its multi-satellite payload into Sun-synchronous orbit – beginning with primary passenger COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation, then CHEOPS (Characterising…
NASA has selected United Launch Services LLC (ULS) of Centennial, Colorado, to provide launch services for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-T (GOES-T) mission, which will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s weather, oceans and environment, real-time mapping of total lightning activity, and improved monitoring of solar activity and space weather. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019121801
The Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province will host around 20 launch missions in 2020, including two satellites of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), according to an official from the centre. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019121802
Rocket Lab has begun construction on a new launch pad located at Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. The new pad will be the company’s third launch pad for the Electron launch vehicle, joining the existing pad at Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and the newly opened pad at Launch Complex 2 in Virginia,…
Capella Space, an information services company that provides on-demand Earth observation imagery, has signed a contract with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), to study the integration of its synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery into the NRO’s national ground architecture. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019121804
Rocket: Falcon 9; Payload: JCSAT-18/Kacific1; Date: 17 December 2019, 0010 UTC; Launch site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA. The satellite was deployed into a 273 km x 20,324 km x 26.91° geostationary transfer orbit approximately 33 minutes after lift-off. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019121700
Following an outage that postponed Soyuz Flight VS23 at the Spaceport in French Guiana, replacement operations are underway for the faulty equipment. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019121701