News & Events

Another Iranian attempt to launch a satellite has failed, even though reportedly all stages of the flight took place as planned. However, the satellite did not reach the speed needed to inject it into the desired orbit, according to the Iranian Fars news. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020904

Boeing narrowly missed a "catastrophic failure" during its December flight test of the CST-100 Starliner that was cut short by an unrelated problem, a NASA safety review panel said. It recommended that the agency examine Boeing’s software verification process before letting it fly humans to space. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020905

Airbus has redefined its portfolio of turnkey Earth observation systems, specifically designed for the international market. The company said it now offers a portfolio of end-to-end systems that complies with the increasing variety of user requirements and business models of its customers. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020906

Mission operators report that Voyager 2 continues to be stable and that communications between Earth and the spacecraft are good. The spacecraft has resumed taking science data, and the science teams are now evaluating the health of the instruments following their brief shutoff. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020907

Viasat reported financial results for the third quarter fiscal year 2020. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020908

Rocket: Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat; Payload: 34 OneWeb satellites; Date: 6 February 2020, 2142 UTC; Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The rocket lifted off a planned and was to deploy the satellites during a mission of 3 hours, 45 minutes [too long for this issue–Ed.] http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020600

L3Harris Technologies has reached a major milestone in the U.S. Air Force’s Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) project – passing the preliminary design review that defines the spacecraft’s path to delivery and allows the programme to move to the next phase of development. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020601

For the first time, an ESA deep space antenna has sent commands to two ESA spacecraft, simultaneously, at the Red Planet. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020602

Azerbaijani satellite operator Azercosmos and Japanese Ground Segment as a Service provider Infostellar have signed an agreement that will enable Infostellar customers access to their satellite constellations from the Azercosmos Ground Station (AGS), located in the Absheron peninsula. AGS is ideally positioned between Europe and Asia. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020603

Intelsat and other satellite providers would receive as much as US$14.9 billion under a proposal from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to compensate them for giving up C-band spectrum that is to be auctioned to wireless companies. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2020020604