Satellite Operators On Guard Against Ground Attack at 2015 Spectrum Conclave

EUTELSAT 3B satellite in the Mistral room for mechanical tests

Copyright EADS Astrium / D. Marques

Commercial satellite fleet operators on March 11 said international regulators are using “flawed” documentation in calculating the future radio-spectrum requirements of terrestrial mobile broadband services.

The result, they said, is that overblown estimates of how much spectrum will be required for terrestrial wireless broadband will be distributed to governments worldwide in the run-up to a meeting in 2015 of global radio spectrum regulators.

Satellite companies are expecting a re-run of a 2007 fight with wireless terrestrial operators over a slice of the C-band spectrum heavily used by satellite services, particularly in less-developed nations.

The 2007 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) ended with what was portrayed as a victory for satellite operators in maintaining priority access to C-band.

It turns out to have been only a partial victory, and perhaps only a temporary one. WRC-15 is now shaping up to feature a renewed push for C-band by terrestrial wireless operators.

Unlike in 2007, these companies can now point to millions of smartphones in service as Exhibit A in their argument that they need more spectrum.

It is here that the data produced by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Geneva-based United Nations affiliate that regulates wireless spectrum and satellite orbital positions, may have a disastrous effect on governments now starting to develop policies for WRC-15.

Michel de Rosen

“The ITU demand study for spectrum for mobile is simply flawed,” said Michel de Rosen, chief executive of Eutelsat of Paris.

“We’ve looked at this quite carefully and this is a major exaggeration [of demand] by a factor of 10 or even more than 100 times.”

Satellite companies said after WRC-07 that they had learned their lesson and never again would be blindsided by threats to their spectrum.

This time around, they said, they had begun organizing themselves and their constituencies so that they are prepared for WRC-15.

Romain Bausch

“We have been making good preparation this time,” said Romain Bausch, chief executive of SES of Luxembourg.

He said SES has placed representatives on the regional ITU bodies that help prepare WRC-15, and that SES recently hosted an ITU delegation led by ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure to assure that the satellite industry’s views are taken into account.

Bausch said among the subjects brought up with the ITU are “the difficulties we have with the [spectrum] requirements as defined by the mobile guys.”

“Let’s not be naïve,” de Rosen said, allowing as how he did not mean to question the competence of the ITU personnel, but rather that of the political delegates to WRC-15.

“This is a real struggle with people who want to take our lunch.”

Read the full article here

EADS wins lucrative ESA Contract for Ariane 6 Launcher - No Surprise

European Airbus Defence and Space (EADS), number two worldwide in space technologies and ESA's prime contractor, has been awarded a 60-million-euro contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) to continue definition and feasibility studies in 2014, for the new Ariane 6 European launcher.

These studies will pinpoint the detailed architecture developed so far and consolidate the launcher's main characteristics.

The results of these studies will be revealed in November 2014 at ESA's System Requirements Review (SRR).

Validation of the programme's progress should allow ESA to set the specifications of the Ariane 6 launch system, which will then enable member states to decide on continuation of the new launcher's development at the next ESA Ministerial Council meeting, scheduled for December 2014.

European Airbus Defence and Space (EADS) will continue fine tuning the definition of the Ariane 6 launcher, while in parallel developing the Ariane 5 ME launcher and, in particular, developing many features common to both Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6.

The ESA contracts awarded to EADS Astrium (now owned and integrated into European Airbus Defence and Space, EADS) in 2013 include developing the Ariane 5 ME with the aim of improving Ariane 5 performance by over 20% by 2018.

At the November 2012 Ministerial Council meeting, ESA decided to commence definition studies for the new Ariane 6 launcher and to continue with the development of Ariane 5 ME, while also seeking to maximise synergies between the two future launchers.

None of this comes as any surprise as EADS continues to benefit from its close contact with the directors of ESA and its near-monopoly hold on European Space Technology, Satellite and Launcher systems.

Carmat SA: European Space technology leads to artificial heart development

Four test patients suffering from terminal cardiac failure will soon receive artificial hearts from the French company Carmat, now approved for human trials in France. 

Brainchild of the cardiac surgeon Professor Alain Carpentier, the prosthetic is the result of 15 years of collaboration with aerospace giant Astrium, the space subsidiary of EADS. 

Credit: Carmat

An artificial heart containing miniaturised space technology will soon beat inside a person, having now been approved for human trials in France.

With heart disease killing over 100 million people in developed countries alone and the demand for transplants far exceeding donations, creating a totally artificial heart has been the holy grail of cardiovascular medicine for half a century.

Brainchild of the visionary cardiac surgeon, Professor Alain Carpentier, the prosthetic is the result of 15 years of collaboration with aerospace giant Astrium, the space subsidiary of EADS.

In 2008, with support from the French Government and investors, Prof. Carpentier founded the EADS spin-off company, Carmat, to complete the work.

Combining the unique expertise of Prof. Carpentier, known worldwide for inventing today's most used heart valves, with Astrium's experience in building satellites, Carmat produced their first completely artificial heart earlier this year.

The Carmat-developed prosthetic heart has been developed utilising the expertise and technologies from European space programmes. 

In particular, the expertise in guaranteeing the extreme reliability of electronics on satellites helped the Carmat team to build a device that could withstand the tough conditions of the body’s circulatory system and pump 35 million times per year for at least five years without fail. 

Credit: Carmat

It turned out that space had the ingredients that Carmat needed. Working closely with satellite engineers, the company applied EADS Astrium's expertise in building spacecraft to guarantee the necessary precision and durability for an artificial human organ like a heart.

Fashioned in part from biological tissue and in part from miniature satellite equipment, the device combines the latest advances in medicine, biology, electronics and materials science to imitate a real heart.

The team had to build a device that could withstand the tough conditions of the body's circulatory system and pump 35 million times per year for at least five years without fail.

They needed the ultimate in reliability, and the answer came from design methodologies, testing strategies and know-how for the electronics on satellites.

"Space and the inside of your body have a lot in common," says Matthieu Dollon, Head of Business Development in EADS Astrium's French Elancourt Equipment team, who are working closely with Carmat on the heart.

"They both present harsh and inaccessible environments."

Telecom satellites are built to last 15 years on their own in space, 36 000 km above Earth. The heart might be closer than a satellite but it is just as inaccessible.

Read the full story here

European Space Agency (ESA) sets a path for big space science

Europe has fixed a broad plan for the big space science missions it will launch over the next two decades.

It will likely lead to a large X-ray telescope being launched in 2028, and to an orbiting observatory to detect gravitational waves going up in 2034.

Together, these two ventures will cost in excess of 2bn euros (£1.7bn).

They join a mission already approved known as Juice, which will see a big satellite sent to observe Jupiter and its icy moons in 2022.

The path ahead was set by the Science Policy Committee (SPC) of the European Space Agency (Esa), which is meeting in Paris, France.

The committee's decision should now give clear direction and certainty to Europe's research and industrial base.

Fabio Favata

"These big missions take a long time to put together - of the order of 20 years," said Dr Fabio Favata, head of Esa's Science Planning and Community Coordination Office.

"Of course, when you fix things you trade flexibility for stability, but this gives the community the opportunity to plan. They now understand what will be the 'pillars', what will be the 'cornerstones'," he told reporters.

The SPC gathering was asked to approve a set of scientific "themes" that will guide the selection of Esa's next Large Class mission opportunities.

The agency tries to launch one of these flagship endeavours every six years.

The themes are titled the "hot and energetic Universe", and the "gravitational Universe".

And although these themes do not endorse a specific X-ray telescope or gravitational wave detection concept, their prescription is so tight that only two candidates can have real confidence of making it through the forthcoming selection process.

These are the two consortia that narrowly lost out to the Juice team in the last L-Class competition in 2012.

The Athena+ science instruments. Left: Design drawing of the X-IFU showing the Dewar and a zoom on the focal plane assembly. Right: Design drawing of the WFI.

The X-ray telescope proposal currently goes by the name of Athena+. It would be roughly four tonnes in mass and have a 12m focal length.

With a survey capability and sensitivity a hundred times better than today's best space telescopes, Athena+ would be used to study the origin of the monstrous black holes that reside at the centres of galaxies, among other objectives.

A Lisa-like observatory would detect gravitational waves using lasers fired across millions of km of space

It would fire lasers across millions of km of space to try to measure the disturbance in the fabric of space-time resulting from exploding stars and merging black holes.

The gravitational wave observatory, Laser Interferometer Space Antennagoes, (Lisa).

It is a concept that has been studied for the better part of 20 years already.

Indeed, ESA is about to fly a small satellite called Lisa Pathfinder to demonstrate some of the key technologies.

The agency will call for proposals to take the 2028 launch opportunity early next year. There will then be a design phase with various technical reviews before a formal adoption of a mission in about 2018.

Read the full article here

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): NirSpec 'First starlight' instrument complete

Europe has reached another milestone in its contribution to Hubble's successor - the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

An industrial team led from EADS Astrium in Germany has completed the build of the Near-Infrared spectrometer, one of four instruments that will go in JWST.

NirSpec's job will be to determine the age, composition, movement and distance of the objects in its field of view.

The expectation is that some of these targets will include the very first stars to shine in the Universe.

That would mean picking up light signals that have travelled across space for perhaps 13.6 billion light-years - something Hubble cannot do.

JWST will make it possible with a suite of next-generation technologies, including a 6.5m primary mirror (more than double the width of Hubble's main mirror), and a shield the size of a tennis court to guard its keen vision against the light and heat from the Sun.

NirSpec is critical to this new capability, and represents 10 years of design and manufacturing endeavour.

In a short ceremony in Ottobrunn on Friday, the instrument was handed over to the European Space Agency (ESA), which had commissioned NirSpec.

The Paris-based organisation then immediately passed the near-200m-euro instrument to the US space agency (NASA), which leads the JWST venture.

On 20 September, NirSpec will be flown to Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Center for integration into the giant orbiting observatory.

Europe's major industrial commitments to JWST are now complete.

Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri)
Its other instrument - the Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri), which was assembled in the UK - was safely delivered to North America last year.

The one outstanding task - and it is a very onerous one - will be to launch JWST in October 2018.

This will be performed by an Ariane 5 rocket from Esa's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

When I visited NirSpec in the Ottobrunn clean room last week, there was not much to see because the finished instrument was dressed for shipment in its protective thermal coat.

But if you could lift that covering, you would lay eyes on what appears to be an impossible optical maze.

NirSpec will be mounted just behind JWST's primary mirror and will sample the gathered light via a kind of periscope.

A series of mini-mirrors will then corral and condition this light, moving it towards a grating element where it can be sliced and diced into its component colours - its spectra.

Detectors are positioned at the end of the maze to read these colours and convert them into an electronic signal that can be transmitted to the ground.

All this is done in the near-infrared, in the wavelengths from 0.6 to 5 microns. This is the region of the electromagnetic spectrum where you would expect to pick up starlight that has been stretched on its 13-billion-year journey across an expanding cosmos.

An interesting aspect of NirSpec's design is that nearly half by weight of the instrument is made from ultra-stiff silicon carbide.

"The unique feature of silicon carbide is that it allows us to make structure and mirrors out of the same material," explains Astrium programme manager Ralf Maurer.

"This helps us survive the transition going from warm to cold; there is no deformation. And that gives us a very stable alignment of the optics."

ESA EADS Astrium Alphasat: Deploys Massive 11m Antenna

ESA's Alphasat, Europe's largest-ever telecom satellite, reached a temporary position in the geostationary ring last weekend, where it deployed its 11 m-diameter main antenna over the course of a day - marking ten days in orbit and completing one of the final steps towards starting services.

It will stay in this slot for several weeks while Inmarsat together with ESA continue testing the telecom payload, the backup units on the Alphabus platform and ESA's four hosted payloads.

Several major milestones have been met over the past few days, including rising to geostationary altitude after separation from its Ariane 5 launcher, and deploying its twin four-panel solar wings, spanning 40 m.

The panels rotate automatically, following the Sun, while Alphasat's sophisticated attitude control system tracks its position above Earth.

All of these milestones were assured by a team from EADS Astrium, the Alphasat prime contractor, managed by Inmarsat.

In a cooperative effort unprecedented in Europe, the team was supported by ESA and France's CNES space agency, as well as Thales Alenia Space for Alphabus platform operations.

Alphasat uses the first flight model of the new platform. The Alphabus line, developed by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space, under a joint contract to ESA and CNES, is Europe's response to market demand for increased broadcasting services.

It accommodates missions with up to 22 kW of payload power and mass up to two tonnes. As a high-power multipurpose platform, it gives European industry an unprecedented and unique position in the global telecom market.

Jena-Optonik's Astro APS startracker was the first hosted payload to be switched on, measuring the satellite's attitude.

Alphasat joins Inmarsat's award-winning I-4 satellite fleet, which has been powering global broadband connectivity for government and commercial customers in the L-band since 2009.

The new satellite with its new-generation advanced payload will provide additional mobile satellite communications capacity over Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

ESA Euclid to probe dark Universe with Astrium science module

Euclid. Credit: ESA

The module carrying the telescope and scientific instruments of ESA's Euclid 'dark Universe' mission is now being developed by Astrium in Toulouse, France.

Euclid will be launched in 2020 to explore dark energy and dark matter in order to understand the evolution of the Universe since the Big Bang and, in particular, its present accelerating expansion.

Dark matter is invisible to our normal telescopes but acts through gravity to play a vital role in forming galaxies and slowing the expansion of the Universe.

Dark energy, however, causes a force that is overcoming gravity and accelerating the expansion seen around us today.

Together, these two components are thought to comprise 95% of the mass and energy of the Universe, with 'normal' matter, from which stars, planets and we humans are made, making up the remaining small fraction. Their nature remains a profound mystery.

"Euclid will address the cosmology-themed questions of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015–25 programme with advanced payload technologies, enabling Europe to become a world leader in this field of research," says Thomas Passvogel, Head of the Project Department in ESA's Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration.

Astrium will deliver a fully integrated payload module incorporating a 1.2 m-diameter telescope feeding the mission's two science instruments, which are being developed by the Euclid Consortium.

The two state-of-the art, wide-field instruments – a visible-light camera and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer – will map the 3D distribution of up to two billion galaxies and the associated dark matter and dark energy, spread over more than a third of the whole sky.

By surveying galaxies stretched across ten billion light-years, the mission will plot the evolution of the very fabric of the Universe and the structures within it over three-quarters of its history.

In particular, Euclid will address one of the most important questions in modern cosmology: why is the Universe expanding at an accelerating rate today, rather than slowing down due to the gravitational attraction of all the matter in it?

The discovery of this cosmic acceleration in 1998 was rewarded with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011 and yet there is no accepted explanation for it.

By using Euclid to study its effects on the galaxies and clusters of galaxies across the Universe, astronomers hope to come much closer to understanding the true nature and influence of this mysterious dark energy.

"We are excited that Euclid has reached this important milestone, allowing us to progress towards launch in 2020, and bringing us ever closer to uncovering some of the Universe's darkest secrets," says Giuseppe Racca, ESA's Euclid Project Manager.

Euclid is an ESA survey mission to investigate the nature of dark matter and dark energy. It was selected as the second Medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme in October 2011 and formally adopted in June 2012.

The mission will be launched in 2020 and will orbit around the Sun–Earth L2 point located 1.5 million km from Earth. Science and spacecraft operations will be conducted by ESA.

ESA budget cuts a major blow to CarbonSat - Earth climate science

CarbonSat Image Credit: Astrium

ESA’s funding shortfall is bad news for CarbonSat, a mission aiming to track atmospheric carbon dioxide.

For Europe’s space chiefs, the outcome of last week’s European Space Agency (ESA) budget negotiations was better than expected, given the continent’s economic troubles.

But for Volker Liebig, ESA’s head of Earth Observation programmes (EOP), there is a sting in the agreement.

The multi-year budget that member states approved — which falls some €2 billion (US$2.6 billion) short of ESA’s proposed spending of about €12 billion — could force him to postpone or cancel a mission aimed at pinning down the mysterious carbon sinks that are slowing the rise of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.

Ahead of the budget negotiations in Naples, Italy, on 20–21 November, Liebig had hoped to secure around €1.25 billion for new research satellites.

With France, Italy and Spain contributing much less than expected, he received €1.9 billion for Earth-observation projects.

But €808 million has already been allocated for a new generation of weather-forecasting satellites, leaving him with little more than €1 billion for research missions.

“We have to discuss with scientists in the next few weeks what to do,” Liebig says. “But we will not be able to develop all the science satellites we wanted to.”

Most vulnerable, he says, is a planned €250-million climate-change mission scheduled for launch in about 2018.

One of the two contenders for the mission, CarbonSat, would map atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane at high-enough resolution to investigate a long-standing puzzle: why only about half of the CO₂ emitted by human activities remains in the atmosphere.

Scientists assume that the rest is absorbed largely by the oceans and plants, but ground-based monitoring stations are too few and far apart to pinpoint the sinks.

Satellites could fill in the gaps in the picture, but in April ESA lost contact with Envisat, the one satellite providing such data (see Nature 484, 423–424; 2012).

Neither Japan’s existing Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite nor NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), scheduled for launch in 2014, will map greenhouse-gas concentrations in as much detail as CarbonSat, which would survey the whole globe with a resolution of 4 square kilometres.

“The information that it would collect is essential for developing, implementing, and monitoring greenhouse-gas-emission policies,” says atmospheric physicist David Crisp of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is the science team leader of OCO-2. “A timely launch of this satellite should be among the highest priorities of ESA”.

CarbonSat’s competitor for ESA funding, FLEX, would also help to pin down carbon sinks, by measuring the faint fluorescence generated by plants during photosynthesis — a measure of how efficiently they absorb carbon.

“The last thing we want to do is to destroy the forests or whatever is absorbing almost half of the CO₂ that we are emitting,” says Crisp.

“Wouldn’t it be good to know where these processes are occurring?”

ESA DLR: EDRS space network ready to go ahead

The design of Europe’s data relay satellite system – EDRS - has been completed and approved.

This marks the moment when it moves ahead with a green light from its first customer, the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative from the European Union (GMES).

EDRS will provide a telecommunications network that is fast, reliable and seamless, making real-time information from satellites available on demand.

EDRS will be the first commercially operated data relay system to deliver services to the Earth observation community.

It is being built through a Public–Private Partnership (PPP) between ESA and Astrium Services, using payloads carried by two satellites in geostationary orbit, hovering 36 000 km above the Equator, where their speed matches Earth’s rotation.

Data transmitted from satellites in lower orbits to either of these EDRS payloads can then be relayed to the ground.

The payload includes a laser terminal developed by TESAT of Germany to transmit up to 1.8 gigabits per second over distances in excess of 40 000 km, between the lower satellites and EDRS in geostationary orbit.

A design review board of senior members from ESA, Astrium and the DLR German Aerospace Center approved the entire system design: from the satellites to the support that will be required from the ground.

The industrial organisation is fully in place with all subcontracts negotiated and ESA’s partner Astrium Services ready to begin production.

“EDRS is a fantastic breakthrough for Europe, from the innovative laser communication terminal technology, which is the heart of EDRS, to the provision of operational services by 2014 through a PPP that combines the best from European space companies with the national and European space institutions,” says Magali Vaissiere, director of ESA’s Telecommunications and Integrated Applications Directorate.

The first of the two EDRS payloads will be carried on the Eutelsat-EB9B satellite, starting operation in 2014, built by Astrium and positioned at 9°E over the Equator.

The second satellite, planned for launch in 2016, will carry the second EDRS payload as well as the Hylas-3 payload from the UK’s Avanti Communications. This satellite will be built by Germany’s OHB using the SmallGEO platform, currently under development by OHB under ESA contract.

Space Debris: French Corporation use UK design to 'harpoon' old satellites

UK engineers are developing a system to harpoon rogue or redundant satellites and pull them out of the sky.

It is a response to the ever growing problem of orbital junk - old pieces of hardware that continue to circle the Earth and which now pose a collision threat to operational spacecraft.

The harpoon would be fired at the hapless satellite from close range.

A propulsion pack tethered to the projectile would then pull the junk downwards, to burn up in the atmosphere.

"Space has become a critical part of our infrastructure - from weather forecasting and Earth observation, to GPS and telecommunications," said the harpoon's designer, Dr Jaime Reed, from French corporation EADS Astrium (UK).

"Space junk poses a real threat to these vital services if we do nothing about it, and so it's very important we develop capture technologies to remove some of this material. Studies have shown that taking out just a few large items each year can help us get on top of the problem."

Dr Reed's proposal is for a barbed spear about 30cm in length. It would be mounted on a "chaser satellite" that would edge to within 100m of a junk object.

Pictures sent to the ground would then be used to assess the target, before the chaser was moved to within perhaps 20m to take a shot.

Once the harpoon is hooked through the skin of the rogue satellite or rocket stage, the chaser could either pull on a trailing polymer cord itself or deploy a separate thruster unit to do the job of dragging the aimless drifter towards Earth.

Explosive concern
This is research in its very early stages. The BBC has filmed firing tests of a prototype harpoon at Astrium UK's Stevenage base.

EADS, the largest space manufacturer of aerospace and weapons in Europe, is also pursuing other ideas at its centres in France and Germany.

These concepts involve nets and robotic grappling devices. All systems have their pros and cons.

Harpoons could deal well with a satellite that is tumbling, for example, but the approach has its critics because of the fear it could actually add to our problems in space.

"Historically, one of the great sources of debris has been the explosion of fuel tanks in spent rocket stages," explained Dr Reed.

"We obviously don't want to be the cause of that, so our harpoon has a crushable cylinder. It's like a piston, and as soon as the harpoon hits the satellite wall, it rapidly decelerates, ensuring we don't travel right through the spacecraft, puncturing the tanks."

More than 50 years of space activity have left a huge quantity of redundant hardware in orbit.

This includes not just whole satellites and the upper-stages of the rockets used to put them there, but also debris from fuel tank explosions and nuclear powered devices.

ESA Ariane 5 ECA Lifts Indian European Telecom Satellites into Orbit

Europe’s Ariane 5 ECA rocket on Sept. 28 successfully placed Indian and European telecommunications satellites into transfer orbit, with both satellites reported healthy and on the way to final position.

In its 51st consecutive success and the fifth of seven liftoffs scheduled this year, the Ariane 5 ECA exceeded its previous record for the mass of payload deposited into geostationary transfer orbit.

GSAT-10

The two satellites — India’s GSAT-10 and Luxembourg-based SES’s Astra-2F — together weighed 9,367 kilograms at launch.

The adaptors and dispenser platform added slightly more than 800 kilograms, bringing the total mass separated in orbit to 10,177 kilograms.

The Arianespace consortium of Evry, France, and Ariane 5 prime contractor Astrium Space Transportation are making incremental improvements to Ariane 5.

In November, European Space Agency governments are expected to decide whether to complete development of a new upper stage that would further increase performance to geostationary orbit by about 20 percent starting in 2017.

Built for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which is India’s space agency and doubles as its satellite operator and satellite services vendor, GSAT-10 weighed 3,400 kilograms at launch. It carries 12 C-band, six extended C-band and 12 Ku-band transponders, and is designed to operate for 15 years.

GSAT-10 also carries a navigation payload as part of India’s Gagan GPS augmentation system.

The United States, Europe and Japan have similar overlays, which validate signals delivered by the U.S. GPS constellation of satellites in medium Earth orbit through payloads on geostationary satellites operating 36,000 kilometers over the equator.

ISRO said in a Sept. 30 statement that the maneuvers to bring the satellite to final geostationary position were proceeding on schedule. GSAT-10 will be operated at 83 degrees east.

Astra-2F is the first of four SES satellites being built by EADS, Astrium Satellites of Europe to replace aging SES direct-broadcast spacecraft over Europe.

Astra-2F, weighing nearly 6,000 kilograms at launch, is designed to deliver 13 kilowatts of power to its Ku- and Ka-band payload. It will operate at 28.2 degrees east.

The Ka-band will be used as part of SES’s cautious entry into satellite-delivered consumer broadband service in Europe.

The company already has some 70,000 customers using Ku-band for broadband access, and is adding Ka-band to its new Astra satellites over Europe to test the waters for a higher-speed service.

Liberty completes commercial crew development agreement with NASA

ATK (NYSE: ATK), the company leading the development of the Liberty commercial spacecraft, has been successful in reaching the last milestone under the company's unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with NASA for the Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev-2).

The Liberty Rocket is a commercial crew space system with ATK as main contractor.

Astrium-EADS and Lockheed Martin also serve as sub-contractors.

The first unmanned test flights are forecast to begin in 2014, with crewed flights being planned for 2015. Liberty hopes it will be able to take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) from 2016 onwards.

The Program Status Review (PSR) was the milestone in the Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev-2) in which the Liberty team submitted a detailed progress report to NASA.

This included a flight test plan, system safety review, software status, system requirements and the integrated master schedule. ATK have previously completed five milestones.

Read the full article here: Liberty agreement with NASA

Visually Impaired Children Invited to Touch Space Technology - Astrium

A rather special event recently took place at Astrium’s Elancourt site just outside Paris, when a group of visually impaired youngsters were invited for a very hands-on visit of the plant, which specialises in the design and manufacture of electronic equipment for space rockets and satellites. Astrium attaches a great deal of importance to activities which reach out to the wider community in an endeavour to raise the profile of the space industry, explain how it works and what it contributes to the betterment of human lives. These activities seek to connect with a number of different audiences, from decision-makers to the ordinary man and woman in the street. Making contact with young people in an inclusive manner is a priority, since they are the space engineers and the politicians of the future. A big hit with the children was a ‘foam model’ of the Ariane 5 launcher, with which they could really get to grips, giving them a proper feel for the shape and constituent elements of the rocket. Its presence that day was serendipitous, a neat example of agile thinking on the part of Astrium’s Model Manager, who was called upon to provide mock-ups of a number of the company’s products to enliven the children’s visit. She realised that an unlikely object tucked away in a cupboard was just the thing. Read more here: Visually impaired youngsters invited for a hands-on visit of Astrium’s Elancourt site

India To Launch Astriums Spot 6 Earth Observation Satellite

India’s ISRO PSLV rocket will launch the Spot 6 commercial Earth observation satellite for Astrium Services of Europe late this year under a contract announced April 3 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The 800-kilogram satellite, intended to operate from a near-polar low Earth orbit at 694 kilometers in altitude, will be accompanied on the launch by several other payloads that ISRO did not identify.

EADS Astrium Services is building and launching the identical Spot 6 and 7 satellites using its own funds, with no assistance, nor any guarantee of future image purchases, by the French government.

Astrium officials have said they expect to spend about 300 million euros ($400 million) to build and launch the two spacecraft.

Spot 7 is scheduled for launch in 2014, with a launch vehicle yet to be announced.

Spot 6 and Spot 7 will replace the larger Spot 5 satellite, which was launched in 2002 and has been operating beyond its contracted in-orbit service life since 2008.

Spot 5 has been the principal revenue generator for Astrium Geo-Information Services, the Astrium Services division that commercializes Earth observation imagery.

Spot 6 and Spot 7 are expected to operate 180 degrees apart in low Earth orbit, much as the higher-resolution Pleiades satellites, the first of which was launched in December. The French government financed development of the two Pleiades satellites, and Astrium Geo-Information Services is commercializing Pleiades imagery.

Spot 6 and Spot 7 will be capable of distinguishing objects of 1.5 meters in diameter in black and white, and 6 meters in color. The images will have a swath width of 60 kilometers, like the previous Spot spacecraft, but will be more agile.

The satellites will be able to move the imager up to 45 degrees off nadir back and forth to capture views in front of and behind the satellite, and up to 35 degrees off nadir from side to side.

ISRO said the agreement between Astrium and ISRO’s Antrix commercial arm is part of a long-term cooperation agreement signed in September 2008.

The same collaborative accord covered the construction of the Hylas 1 Ka-band broadband satellite operated by Avanti Communications of London. ISRO and Antrix built the Hylas 1 satellite structure, or bus, with Astrium providing the telecommunications payload.

Express AM4 Destroyed as Effort To Save Russian Satellite Shunned

Express AM-4 satellite. Credit: EADS Astrium photo

The Russian Express AM4 communications satellite, placed into a bad orbit after a rocket failure during its August launch, was intentionally crashed into the Pacific Ocean March 25 despite an attempt to save the craft to serve Antarctic scientists, Spaceflight Now reports.

Polar Broadband Systems Ltd. wanted to purchase the satellite and raise its orbit so that it could provide broadband coverage to researchers in the South Pole region, said company co-founder Bill Readdy, a former space shuttle commander and NASA manager. But the company’s phone calls to the Russian space agency and Express AM4’s insurance underwriter in recent days were not answered, Readdy said.

Moving the satellite into an orbit high over Antarctic research sites would have provided broadband coverage of the South Pole region for more than 14 hours per day, Readdy said.

EADS' Astrium interested in U.S. digital imagery firms

Europe's leading space company, Astrium, is "generally interested" in acquiring one of two U.S. digital imagery providers, GeoEye Inc or DigitalGlobe Inc , and would look carefully at a deal if the price was affordable, a top Astrium executive reported on Tuesday.

Evert Dudok, chief executive of Astrium Satellites, said the company's parent, Europe's EADS, was actively looking for takeover targets in the United States, and either of the two companies would be a good fit with Astrium, which is ranked No. 3, behind them, in the geospatial information market.

"We are generally interested, but we have to really see whether that makes any sense," Dudok told Reuters after a panel at the Satellite 2012 conference. "Should such an occasion arise at a price that is affordable, one would certainly look at it."

Dudok's comments came after Sean O'Keefe, chief executive of EADS North America, underscored the company's determination to pump up its U.S. revenues through acquisitions, alliances or mergers, especially in the services and satellites sectors.

Dudok noted that Astrium last year acquired Vizada, a Paris-based satellite communications firm, and was building a strong geo-information business that provides earth observation, radar and other data to customers around the world.

He said both GeoEye and DigitalGlobe did a great deal of work for the U.S. government, which could make an acquisition by the European company more difficult, but he said an acquisition in that area would allow Astrium to streamline market approaches and combine databases for expanded commercial sales.

GeoEye and DigitalGlobe shares have come under pressure in recent weeks amid reports that the U.S. government plans to halve or significantly scale back its expected procurement of $7.3 billion in digital imagery over the next decade.

How Astrium Builds a Satellite - YouTube

ESA Human Spaceflight and Exploration: Contract Signed for Space Station support

Joachim Schaper, ESA Head of Procurement Department, Michael Menking, Astrium Senior Vice President for Orbital Systems & Space Exploration, Thomas Reiter ESA Director for Human Spaceflight and Operations sign a two-year contract on 13 December 2011 to provide Industrial Operations Team support to the ESA’s human spaceflight activities.

Credits: ASTRIUM

“In Astrium, ESA has found a reliable partner to serve as prime industrial contractor and consortium leader,” said Thomas Reiter.

“The company is uniquely placed to manage the operation and utilisation of the International Space Station through its experience in human spaceflight.

“By signing this initial contract today, Astrium has accepted the task of delivering services for the operation of the ISS during the period 2011/2012 for a fixed cost of €240 million.

Under the contract, Astrium will oversee an industrial consortium responsible for providing all services related to the European components of the International Space Station.

Astrium's responsibilities include mission control, astronaut training, maintenance and logistics, extensions for new space experiments, ground station operations, communication systems and data transfer.

ESA and Astrium have also agreed to implement a series of measures over the next few years aiming to reduce the costs of the programme by some 30% between now and 2016. 

Roscosmos: Proton Rocket Cleared To Resume Busy Launch Schedule

Russia’s Proton-M heavy-lift rocket and its Breeze-M upper stage, which placed a $300 million telecommunications satellite in a useless orbit Aug. 18, is preparing to launch three more times in the next six weeks, according to the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and the rocket’s commercial marketing company.

International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va., which commercializes Proton launches, is completing its own review of the Aug. 18 failure and is expected to concur with the findings of a Russian state commission that concluded a programming error was responsible.

The Express-AM4 satellite owned by the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC) of Moscow and insured for about $300 million was placed into an orbit from which it may never have recovered.

In the event, the satellite had its own, apparently unrelated, difficulties in communicating with ground teams, making any recovery effort impossible. RSCC has since declared the satellite a total loss.

With the Breeze-M issue clearly identified, Roscosmos has lifted the ban on Breeze-M flights. The Russian Defense Ministry is expected to be the first post-failure customer for the vehicle, with a planned military telecommunications satellite launch in mid-September.

Satellite fleet operator SES of Luxembourg’s QuetzSat-1 telecommunications satellite will be next up. Its launch is set for late September, according to SES and ILS.

The Proton-M/Breeze-M vehicle has scheduled the launch of the large ViaSat-1 Ka-band broadband communications satellite for mid-October. The satellite’s owner, ViaSat Inc. of Carlsbad, Calif., said Sept. 8 that ILS and ViaSat were expected to conclude their own Proton-M/Breeze-M review Sept. 9.

The satellite’s shipment from manufacturer Space Systems/Loral’s Palo Alto, Calif., plant to Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan would then occur Sept. 13.

Assuming this schedule is kept, it remained unclear how many other launches ILS could conduct before the end of the year, especially since Russian government missions on Proton are scheduled.

Several commercial customers are awaiting flight. Among them is Astrium Services of Europe, which is prime contractor for the United Arab Emirates’ two-satellite Yahsat commercial and military communications system.

Astrium would like the Yahsat-1B satellite to be launched before the end of this year, Astrium Services Chief Executive Eric Beranger said Sept. 9. But he conceded it was unclear whether a place could be found on the ILS manifest.

ESA ATV: Edoardo Amaldi heading for launch at Kourou

The ATV 'Edoardo Amaldi', designed and built by Astrium, is the third unmanned European freight spacecraft for the International Space Station (ISS).

Following the extraordinary success of the ATV-1 'Jules Verne' and ATV-2 'Johannes Kepler' missions, 'Edoardo Amaldi' is on its way by sea to the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The ship has undergone extensive system testing at Astrium's north German Bremen site over the last few months and has now been given the go-ahead for the final stage prior to the its flight to the ISS, scheduled for spring next year.

The ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) is not only the biggest, most complex spacecraft ever developed and built in Europe, but is also the first in the world designed to execute rendez-vous and operational docking in fully automated mode.

With the retirement of the US Space Shuttle, the ATV is the largest vehicle supplying the ISS.

It ferries propellants, food, water and equipment to the ISS. Once docked, it uses its own engines to correct the station's orbit, compensating for a regular loss of altitude due to drag and contributes to collision and debris avoidance. At the end of its mission it is filled with waste, and burns up as it heads back into the Earth's atmosphere.

This third ATV is named in honour of the renowned Italian physicist Edoardo Amaldi (1908-1989).

Astrium is industrial prime contractor for the ATV under contract to the European Space Agency (ESA).

There's no time to rest for Astrium's integration team, as they are already hard at work on Edoardo Amaldi's successor - ATV-4 'Albert Einstein'!