Tag: Airbus Defense and Space
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Live coverage: Vega rocket blasts off from French Guiana on commercial flight
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Vega rocket rocket with PeruSat 1 and four SkySat Earth observation satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
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Timeline for the Vega rocket’s seventh launch
Two orbits. Five satellites. Four upper stage burns. Follow the key events scheduled during the European Vega rocket’s launch from French Guiana with the PeruSat 1 high-resolution reconnaissance satellite and four commercial eyes-in-the-sky owned by Google’s Terra Bella imaging company. Credit: Arianespace T+00:00:00 – Liftoff The Vega rocket’s first stage P80 solid rocket motor ignites…
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Google satellites, Peruvian payload stacked for launch on Vega rocket
The Vega rocket’s payload fairing, containing the PeruSat 1 and Terra Bella satellites, arrived at the base of the Vega launch pad Sept. 2. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – P. Piron Five Earth-imaging spacecraft for the Peruvian government and Google’s Terra Bella satellite subsidiary are enclosed inside the nose cone of…
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SES stands by SpaceX after getting ‘good discount’ on reused rocket
Three of SpaceX’s recovered Falcon 9 boosters inside a hangar at launch pad 39A. Credit: SpaceX One of SpaceX’s most loyal commercial customers, the European-based telecom satellite operator SES, remains committed to flying a spacecraft aboard a “refurbished” Falcon 9 booster as soon as the company resumes rocket flights, officials said. SpaceX and SES announced…
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SES agrees to launch satellite on ‘flight-proven’ Falcon 9 rocket
File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket launch. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX and SES, an international communications satellite operator based in Luxembourg, have agreed to place the SES 10 television relay craft aboard the first launch of a reused “flight-proven” Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral as soon as October, the companies announced Tuesday. The agreement…
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Scientists to land, and switch off, Rosetta comet probe in September
Artist’s concept of the Rosetta spacecraft at comet 67P. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM/ATG medialab The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission will end Sept. 30 with a dicey descent to the core of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a risky, but potentially rewarding finale punctuated by commands to automatically safe the probe’s rocket thrusters and turn off its radio transmitter. The…
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Departure of Europe’s first Mars rover delayed to 2020
Artist’s concept of the ExoMars rover. Credit: ESA Europe’s ExoMars rover will not be ready for launch in 2018, officials said Monday, forcing a two-year delay for the ambitious mission to drill into the Martian surface and search for the remnants of past life. Delays in the development of the European-built rover and a Russian…
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Europe’s Sentinel satellites generating huge ‘Big Data’ archive
This full resolution subset of the first Sentinel 1B image captured Thursday shows Norway’s Nordaustlandet island in the Svalbard archipelago, covered by the Austfonna ice cap. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2016], processed by ESA With a second radar surveillance satellite already returning images less than three days after launch, managers in charge of Europe’s…
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Soyuz blasts off with environmental satellite, general relativity probe
The Soyuz ST-A rocket blasts off from French Guiana Monday with Sentinel 1B, Microscope and three CubeSats. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon A Russian Soyuz rocket fired off a launch pad in French Guiana Monday evening with satellite missions to monitor Earth’s environment, test Einstein’s theory of general relativity,…
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Florida factory to mass-produce satellites at record pace
Artist’s concept of the OneWeb factory at Exploration Park, Florida. Credit: OneWeb OneWeb officials Tuesday unveiled plans for a factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will churn out up to 15 satellites per week to populate low Earth orbit and beam broadband Internet signals worldwide. Repurposing aircraft assembly…