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Launch Providers

Smile When GeoEye-1 Flies By

September 2, 2008 / Earth Observation & Imaging

GeoEye-1 satellite, designed and built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, has a big job ahead of it after its launch on Thursday, September 4, from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California. The satellite will be able to see an object the size of home plate on a baseball diamond but also map the location of an object that size to within about nine feet (three meters) of its true location on the surface of the Earth without need for ground control points. Together, GeoEye's IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellites can collect almost one million square kilometers of imagery per day.

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High-Five for RapidEye’s Rapid Launch of Five

September 1, 2008 / Launch Providers

A major accomplishment, to be sure as the five-satellite RapidEye constellation was successfully launched onboard Dnepr from Baikonur, Kazakhstan at 0715 UTC today. Following this morning's launch, the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle in slightly different orbits to allow constellation phasing and will eventually be positioned equally spaced within the same orbit about 19 minutes apart.

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Arianespace To Handle Koreasat-6 Launch

August 26, 2008 / Contracts & Commercial Deals

Korean Telecom Corporation (KT Corporation) has selected Arianespace to launch their next communications satellite. To be known as Koreasat-6, the satellite will be boosted into geostationary transfer orbit by an Ariane 5 or Soyuz launcher from the Guiana Space Center, Europe's Spaceport, French Guiana, during the second half of 2010. Koreasat-6 is the second satellite to be launched by Arianespace for the Korean operator, following Koreasat-3, orbited in 1999.

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ESA’s Getting Set To Launch Core Work

August 25, 2008 / Exploration & Science Missions

The European Space Agency (ESA) is about to launch the most sophisticated mission ever to investigate the Earth’s gravitational field and to map the reference shape of our planet, known as the geoid, with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) will be placed into a low altitude near sun-synchronous orbit by a Russian Rockot vehicle launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia, some 800 km north of Moscow.

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ILS + Inmarsat Launch Another Contract

August 25, 2008 / Contracts & Commercial Deals

International Launch Services (ILS) now has a contract today with Inmarsat for the launch of an S-band satellite to provide mobile broadcast and two-way telecommunications services throughout Europe.M/b> The contract follows last week’s successful launch of the Inmarsat-4 F3 satellite on an ILS Proton Breeze M vehicle.

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NASA Disappointed Destroys Rocket After Launch

August 22, 2008 / Launch Providers

NASA destroyed an unmanned experimental rocket carrying a pair of research satellites Friday when it veered off course shortly after an early morning liftoff. At 5:10 a.m. Friday, August 22, the rocket was destroyed by range safety officials after liftoff from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. No injuries or property damage have been reported.

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SpaceX’ Elon Musk — On The Record — “Timing is Everything”

August 8, 2008 / Launch Providers

On August 2nd, Falcon 1 executed a picture perfect first stage flight, ultimately reaching an altitude of 217 km, but encountered a problem just after stage separation that prevented the second stage from reaching orbit. At this point, we are certain as to the origin of the problem. Four methods of analysis — vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, onboard video and a simple physics free body calculation — all give the same answer.

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NASA’s Nanos Sail On

August 1, 2008 / Launch Providers

NASA is planning to fly two nanosatellites as secondary payloads aboard the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket in either August or September of this year. Spaceflight engineers and project managers at NASA's Ames Research Center, and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, teamed together to arrange a fast-paced, low-cost mission.

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A WhiteKnight For A Virgin

July 30, 2008 / Launch Providers

Ever the showman, Richard Branson, along with his Virgin Galactic team and designer Burt Rutan, in a dramatic early morning Mojave Desert setting revealed WhiteKnightTwo, the twin-fuselaged mother plane of the futuristic SpaceShipTwo.

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Proton’s Launch Is On A Breeze

July 25, 2008 / Launch Providers

It's already been done, twice before, and next month the Proton Breeze M launch vehicle will, hopefully, complete the worldwide constellation of Inmarsat-4 (I-4) satellites, thereby providing global broadband coverage.

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