SAT Expo News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven astronauts ended an 11-day journey of nearly 4.5 million miles with a landing Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The mission, designated STS-129, included three spacewalks and the installation of two platforms to the International Space Station’s truss, or backbone. The [...]

The site of a ground station for Galileo, Europe’s global navigation satellite system, inside the Guiana Space Centre (CSG), near Kourou in French Guiana, was inaugurated on 19 November.

The W7 satellite of Eutelsat Communications has been successfully lofted into orbit by a Proton Breeze M rocket supplied by ILS. After a 9-hour 12-minute flight, the launcher released W7 into geosynchronous transfer orbit.  Commenting after successful spacecraft separation, Eutelsat CEO, Michel de Rosen said: “Our W7 satellite is on its way to 36° East. [...]

Cannes, France – Thales Alenia Space has delivered the second flight model high-resolution (HR) optical imaging instrument for integration, testing and validation in the Pleiades earth observation satellite in construction at Astrium facilities in Toulouse. As prime contractor for the Pleiades system – in particular the ground segment – CNES selected Astrium as satellite prime [...]

Thematic channels from across Europe and Africa awarded for highest quality of content and innovation The winners of this year’s prestigious HOT BIRD™ TV Awards, the only international event recognizing the highest quality of content creation and innovation by thematic satellite television channels, were honored on November 20 at a gala ceremony in Venice. The [...]

Twelve years of design, development and hard work have come to fruition with the formal handover of Node 3 from ESA to NASA on 20 November 2009. The ceremony took place in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. The ceremony was attended by Bernardo Patti International Space Station Programme [...]

Kourou -French Guiana – The site of a ground station for Galileo, Europe’s global navigation satellite system, inside the Guiana Space Centre (CSG), near Kourou in French Guiana, was inaugurated on 19 November. The site, which was made available by France’s Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), will play an essential role in the setting up [...]

At 11:51 a.m. EST on November 18th, Commander Charlie Hobaugh backed space shuttle Atlantis into pressurized mating adapter #2 on the International Space Station’s Harmony node. The two spacecraft were flying 220 miles above Earth between Australia and Tasmania at the time they docked. After a series of leak checks that took about two hours, [...]

Paris – Eutelsat Communications and Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) announced the execution of a strategic agreement for commercial cooperation at the 75° East orbital location. Within the framework of this agreement Eutelsat is colocating its EUROBIRD 4 satellite at 75° East with the ABS-1 and ABS-1A satellites operated by ABS. This redeployment will inject an [...]

Kennedy Space Center, Florida – Atlantis is finally on its way to ISS with mission STS-129 crew. Launched at 2.28 EST, Atlantis is commanded by Charles Hobaugh, piloted by Barry Wilmore. Mission Specialists are Robert L. Satcher, Mike Foreman, Randy Bresnik, Lelan Melvin. Wilmore Satcher and Bresnik are making their first trip to space. Source: [...]