Author: starpathwp-production
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ESA BepiColombo’s Fourth Mercury Flyby Sets New Trajectory Path on September 4
Teams from across ESA and industry have worked continuously over the past four months to overcome a glitch that prevented BepiColombo’s thrusters from operating at full power. The ESA/JAXA mission is still on track, with a new trajectory that will take it just 165 km from Mercury’s surface on Wednesday. Taking BepiColombo closer to Mercury…
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Atheras Analytics to Analyze Ka-Band Propagation for Ground Station Placement for Military Satellite Networks
Atheras Analytics will provide Ka-band propagation analysis to enable the UK MoD to determine the location of new Ka-band ground infrastructure to support the upcoming SKYNET 6 secure military satellite network. SKYNET is the MoD’s satellite communications (SATCOM) capability and is a family of military communications satellites which will provide strategic communication services to the…
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Patti Grace Smith Fellows Share the Program’s Outsized Impact
In this week’s On Orbit podcast episode, we hear firsthand about the impact the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship is making. Patti Grace Smith was a pioneer in the aerospace industry who served as the head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. She broke many barriers as a Black woman and was an…
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Gotonomi Starts Taking Orders for its UAV SATCOM Terminals After Successful Flight Trials
Gotonomi, a UAV satellite connectivity solutions provider, has announced the completion of further successful flight trials and the opening of orders for production units of all variants of its UAV satcom terminals at Commercial UAV Expo 2024 in Las Vegas. The launch marks a significant milestone, transitioning from pre-production flight development kits to type-approved, commercial…
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Blue Origin Targets Mid-October for New Glenn’s First Launch
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is approaching its debut launch in a mission for NASA, which could take place in October. New Glenn will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE — Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers — mission in its inaugural launch. Last week, Blue Origin announced it is targeting an ESCAPADE launch date no earlier…
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SoftBank Taps Eutelsat for LEO Deal
Eutelsat has signed a new, multi-year deal with SoftBank which will see the company integrate Eutelsat’s OneWeb LEO connectivity services into its offering and provide a new element to the company’s satellite communication services. Initially, the deal will focus on the Japanese market, but will expand to Japanese customers in other territories. Eutelsat announced the…
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ESA completes swan song of its Vega rocket with Sentinel-2C launch
Sentinel-2 in the Vega launch tower. Image: ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–T. Leduc Update 10:52 p.m. EDT: Arianespace confirmed successful deployment of the Sentinel-2C spacecraft. The European Space Agency (ESA) completed its transition to its Vega-C rocket with the final launch of its first-generation Vega rocket. The mission, dubbed VV24, carried an Earth-imaging satellite to a…
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L3Harris Showcases Advanced SATCOM-Integrated Air Defense Prototype in Project Convergence 4
L3Harris’ Agile Development Group has been iteratively developing a robotic-based, highly mobile, short-range air defense capability that meets today’s mission needs and is inherently designed to adapt to tomorrow’s threats quickly and economically. The prototype system participated in this year’s Project Convergence Capstone 4 (PC-C4) field experiment and seamlessly integrated advanced long-range surveillance and electronic…
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NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Changes Astronauts Ahead of September Launch
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, mission’s revised crew members, will launch at least by Tuesday, Sept. 24, on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, previously announced as crewmates, are eligible for reassignment on a future mission. Hague and Gorbunov…
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Launch Roundup: Vega retired after final launch; Polaris Dawn lift off
This week, rockets will launch from all over the globe. China’s CASC sent a Chang Zheng 4B on its 50th successful mission to start the week. The final launch of Arianespace’s Vega rocket went off without a hitch. Polaris Dawn launched four private astronauts to low-Earth orbit, during which the world’s first private EVA out…