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NASA's Dawn spacecraft initiated its 3 billion kilometer (1.7 billion mile) journey through the inner solar system on Thursday at 7:34 a.m. Eastern Time (4:34 a.m. Pacific Time). The mission is to study a pair of asteroids. The Delta 2 rocket, fitted with nine strap-on solid-fuel boosters, safely climbed away from the Florida coastline and launch complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Read MoreAs we reported yesterday, in spite of the fact the Young Engineers’ Satellite (YES2) was able to detach the Fotino capsule from the Foton 3M research satellite. The tether began to unwind, but only 8.5 kilometers of the strong, man-made fiber was deployed of the total 30 km length.
Read MoreOne of the projects closely watched by SatNews is the Second Young Engineers’ Satellite (YES2). Aboard a Foton-M3 orbital mission that launched via Soyuz rocket on September 14th from Baikonur, the satellite separated from the spacecraft on September 25th. The tether then deployed for 8.5 km due to a preprogrammed command cutting Fotino loose from the spacecraft itself.
Read MoreFrom the Russian News & Information Agency (RIA Novosti) comes a report that the Foton-M bio-satellite’s re-entry module, launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on September 14, has landed successfully approximately 105 miles away from Kostanai in northern Kazakhstan. All of the scheduled experiments were successfully carried out, according to Nikolai Sokolov, the flight director of the 12-day mission.
Read MoreYou may recall reading about the funding troubles plaguing the European Union’s (EU) Galileo satellite in previous issues of SatNews… processes for an implementation to pay for this positioning system space vehicle continue to have trouble. A week after the EU proposed to pay for the satellite using the bloc’s joint budget to come with the needed 2.4 billion euros.
Read MoreSpirent Communications has made improvements to customer support capabilities across the world. In Asia, Spirent has added dedicated support facility for its Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) test systems, based out of the existing Spirent offices in Beijing, P. R. China. This new facility enhances Spirent’s existing support offices in USA and Europe.
Read MoreIn December of 2014, the first launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R Series is expected to occur. One of the critical components aboard will be the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has been awarded a $178 million contract by NASA to design and build this component.
Read MoreOerlikon Space has delivered the MIE spectrometer (MSP) for the European wind observation satellite ADM-Aeolus. Together with a second Oerlikon Space spectrometer, the MSP is the core element in the payload of the wind observation satellite, which the European Space Agency ESA plans to launch in 2009.
Read MoreThe Ariane 5 GS launcher for Arianespace's fourth flight of 2007 completed its build-up last Thursday, the 20th of September, with the installation of Intelsat 11 as its upper payload. During activity inside the Final Assembly Building at Europe's Spaceport, the upper payload "stack" was placed atop its Ariane 5.
Read MoreNavCom Technology, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Deere & Company [NYSE:DE], has released its first bundled land survey solution. This is their LAND-PAK All-in-One RTK Land Survey Solution. By pairing NavCom products with complementary technologies and solutions, the LAND-PAK is a complete NavCom-qualified end-user package designed to meet the needs of land survey, from field data collection to office processing.
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