Arcturus suffers unrelated solar array drive troubles GEO satellite operator Viasat Inc has finally confirmed that its recently launched Viasat-3 Americas High Throughput Ka-band communications satellite has suffered a serious blow. The satellite failed to properly...
While the industry trend is to move to “methalox” – liquid methane/liquid natural gas and liquid oxygen (LOX) as propellants – no rocket using this combination had achieved orbit…until now. The Chinese privately run company Landspace has successfully launched its...
At least one experimental communications satellite was reportedly launched into a circular 1100 km orbit inclined at 86.5 degrees inclination at 1100 GMT on 9 July 2023 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in North West China by a CALT-operated Long March 2C/3/YZ-1S...
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9v1.2FT Block 5 rocket from Vandenberg, California, at 1929 GMT on 7 July. The launch vehicle was carrying Starlink Group 5-13, a total of 48 Starlink v1.5 satellites for the second-generation constellation. The B1063 reusable...
The 117th and last Ariane 5, flight VA261 using the Ariane 5 ECA+ variant, successfully lifted off from the ELA3 pad at Kourou, French Guiana, at 2200 GMT on 5 July. The rocket was carrying two communications satellites: Germany’s H2SAT (Heinrich Hertz) and France’s...
A Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat was launched from Vostochny launch site in Far Eastern Russia on 26 June 2023. Aboard was the VNIIEM-built 3.25 metric ton Meteor M2-3, a phased-arraw radar-equipped weather satellite heading for a 800 km sun-synchronous low Earth orbit, as the...