SSI News
Yahsat agrees to order two large GEO comsats Al Yah 4 & 5 from Airbus and reassesses Al Yah 3
The middle eastern satellite operator Yahsat has agreed to order two launch communications satellites to operate from geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) from Airbus Defence and Space. The satellites are called the Al Yah 4 and Al Yah 5 and will replace Al Yah 1 and Al...
Russian cosmonauts install shields and test European Robot Arm on latest spacewalk
At 1444 GMT on 9 August 2023, Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin , opened the Poisk module hatch to begin their Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) spacewalk (Russian EVA-60). Their mission during this EVA was to attach three debris shields to the...
Chinese Long March 2C rocket puts disaster monitoring HJ-2F into orbit
At 2253 GMT on 8 August a Long March 2C (CZ-2C) rocket successfully carried the HJ-2F satellite into sun-synchronous LEO. The mission took place from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, Northern China. The satellite Huanjing Jianzai 2F is a SAR satellite reportedly...
Falcon 9 launch deploys Starlink Group 6-20 into orbit
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9v1.2 FT Block 5 rocket from Vandenberg, California, USA (Pad SLC-4E), 0357 GMT on 8 August 2023. The vehicle was carrying 15 v2 Mini Starlink satellites as part of Starlink Group 6-20 for the second generation constellation. The...
Russian Soyuz 2-1b Fregat rocket launches Glonass K2-13 navsat with supplemental payloads attached
At 2030 GMT on 7 August 2023, a Soyuz 2-1b Fregat successfully launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia carrying the Glonass K2-13 military navigation satellite to its operating position in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). Glonass-K2 (Uragan K2) spacecraft...
SpaceX launches Starlink Group 6-8 set of 22 comsats via a Falcon 9 launch
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9v1.2 FT Block 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, at 0241 GMT on 7 August 2023. The vehicle was carrying Starlink Group 6-8, a total of 22 v2 Mini Starlink satellites for the second generation constellation. The reusable...
Analysis: the US throws its lunar lead away in ‘Great Space Race’ but is still ahead of ‘copycat’ China for Mars (Updated)
There have been some marked changes in the race (back) to the Moon over the past year. But the question on everyone’s minds still is: who will get there first? David Todd provides an answer in the annual Seradata analysis of “The Great Space Race” as well as tackling...
China’s Feng Yun-3F weather satellite is launched by a Long March 4C
A Long March 4C (CZ-4C) rocket successfully launched the 2.8 metric ton Feng Yun-3F (sometimes written as Fengyun-3F) meteorological satellite into an 828 km sun-synchronous orbit from Jiuquan at 0347 GMT on 3 August 2023. The launch on behalf of the China State...
Falcon 9 launches Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 comsat
A SpaceX Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5 rocket successfully launched the communications satellite Galaxy 37 (aka Horizons-4) communications satellite at 0500 GMT on 3 August 2023. The launch took place from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, using the SpaceX-leased SLC-40 pad. ...
Voyager 2 is lost…for a time
An erroneous command sent to the venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft, now at the outer reaches of the solar system, inadvertently made the spacecraft move so that it tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth. Communications were lost with the spacecraft –...
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