SatNews

Satellite Industry Intelligence Since 1983

Missions & Constellations

Great Galileo Goodies For NovAtel

September 4, 2007 / Navigation & PNT

NovAtel Inc. [NASDAQ: NGPS] has been awarded of a contract worth €6.3M (US$8.6M) by Thales Alenia Space Italia (TAS-I) for the continued development of the Ground Reception Chain (GRC) reference receiver for Galileo, Europe’s state-of-the-art Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). TAS-I, NovAtel and Space Engineering were initially selected by the European Space Agency (ESA)/ESNIS/Thales Alenia Space France (TAS-F) and began work on the program in June 2005.

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Orbital Sciences’ News Omnipresence

September 3, 2007 / Exploration & Science Missions

Orbital Sciences Corporation [NYSE: ORB] has been selected by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to design, manufacture, integrate and test the Nuclear Spectroscopic Array (NuSTAR) scientific satellite. Plus, Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Orbital Boost Vehicle (OBV), which is the booster rocket for the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), was successfully launched as part of a test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program.

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SpaceDev’s Thermal Thrust

September 3, 2007 / Spacecraft & Payload Technology

SpaceDev [OTCBB: SPDV] is the recipient of a contract from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The first phase contract value is $3.75 million for the initial development of solar thermal propulsion (STP) and bus design for the High Delta-V Satellite Program. SpaceDev has assembled a team, including General Atomics and BAE Systems, to deliver strong and proven capabilities to address the program’s technical challenges.

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Getting Gaia Going, Maxwell’s Goal

September 3, 2007 / Spacecraft & Payload Technology

Maxwell Technologies Inc. [NASDAQ: MXWL] has won a contract valued at approximately $3 million from Astrium’s United Kingdom-based satellite unit to supply single board computers (SBC) for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) “Gaia” astronomy mission. The goal of the mission is to survey more than a billion stars and other celestial bodies in order to trace the origin and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy.

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Power To The Project By QinetiQ

September 2, 2007 / Spacecraft & Payload Technology

A battery developed by a QinetiQ-led consortium, including ABSL Space Products (ABSL), has successfully powered key, scientific payloads during the final stages of the Foton-M3 mission into space. Foton-M3 is a Russian unmanned spacecraft launched on September 14th from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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Agilent Knows How To Measure Success

September 1, 2007 / Spacecraft & Payload Technology

Agilent Technologies Inc. [NYSE: A] is going to showcase their newest test and measurement solutions for 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) at the upcoming 2007 European Microwave Conference, Pavilion 908. This event will take place during European Microwave Week in Munich, Germany, Oct. 8-12.

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Joy At ESA With Flight Software

August 29, 2007 / Spacecraft & Payload Technology

The compatibility of the final Jules Verne Automatic Transfer Vehicle (ATV) flight software has been successfully tested for the first time in coordination with the European Space Agency (ESA). Additionally, the remainders of the vast International Space Station (ISS) flight software by global teams at the NASA Software Verification Facility (SVF) in Houston were also completely tested.

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Broadcom Chips Away At 802.11n With Silicon Wonderment

August 29, 2007 / Spacecraft & Payload Technology

Broadcom Corporation [NASDAQ: BRCM] has announced the world's first full-featured, single-chip 802.11n solution. The newest member of the Broadcom® Intensi-fi product family is the smallest and most cost-effective 802.11n solution on the market and is the first to enable Wi-Fi products to achieve over 200 Megabits per second (Mbps) of actual wireless throughput.

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MESSENGER Probe Sim Success

August 29, 2007 / Exploration & Science Missions

The MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) probe to Mercury will use low-gain radio frequency antennas and other telecom systems to study various aspects of the planet. The probe’s Radio Science team has just completed a month of successful Doppler performance testing sims within an environment similar to what the probe will encounter in space.

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