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SATELLITE NEWS
RUSSIA RESTORES COMMS WITH SPACE STATION AFTER ROADWORKS CUT CABLE - Russia restored its communications with the International Space Station and satellites this morning after repairing a cable in Moscow that had been damaged during roadworks, Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced.
Roadworks in Moscow actually interrupted space traffic yesterday as an accidentally severed cable cut Russia's communication links with its space hardware overnight.
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(Source: Register)
SOYUZ BOOSTS MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE - Russia launched a Soyuz rocket Wednesday with a military communications satellite to link ground forces, ships and aircraft in the Arctic and Siberia. Liftoff occurred at 3:42 p.m. Moscow time. The rocket flew in the Soyuz 2-1a configuration with a digital flight control system and an enlarged payload fairing. More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now)
AIR FORCE RECEIVES BIDS FOR DEBRIS-TRACKING SPACE FENCE - Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have submitted bids to the U.S. Air Force for construction of a network of radars to scan the sky and detect small fragments of space debris with unprecedented precision. The defense contractors are competing for a contract worth up to $3.5 billion to build the radars under the Air Force's Space Fence program, which aims for a ten-fold improvement in space tracking capability over the Air Force Space Surveillance System radar network, which has been operational since 1961. More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now)
RUSSIA LOSES CONTACT WITH SATELLITES, INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Russia on Wednesday lost the ability to send commands to most of its satellites and its segment of the International Space Station following a power cable failure near Moscow, RIA Novosti reported.
The state news agency said the power cut may also delay the planned November 19 return to Earth of three ISS members who are completing their six-month mission on board the floating international space lab.
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(Source: NDTV)
AIR SOYUZ LANDING COVERAGE TO BE AIRED BY NASA TELEVISION -
NASA Television will provide live coverage as three of the crew members on the International Space Station come back to Earth Sunday, Nov. 18.
Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA, Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko will undock their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft from the station, heading for a pre-dawn landing in Kazakhstan, northeast of the remote town of Arkalyk at 7:53 p.m. CST (7:53 a.m. Kazakhstan time on Nov. 19).
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(Source: RedOrbit)
ATMOSPHERIC CO2 RISKS INCREASING SPACE JUNK: STUDY - A build-up of carbon dioxide in the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere risks causing a faster accumulation of man-made space junk and resulting in more collisions, scientists said on Sunday.
While it causes warming on Earth, CO2 conversely cools down the atmosphere and contracts its outermost layer, the thermosphere, where many satellites including the International Space Station (ISS) operate, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
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(Source: Space Daily)
ARIANE 5 ORBITS EUTELSAT 21B AND STAR ONE C3 SATELLITES - Two telecommunications satellites that will provide expanded relay capacity over areas that include Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America were orbited today by Arianespace on the company's sixth Ariane 5 flight of 2012.
Lifting off on time at 6:05 p.m. from the Spaceport's ELA-3 launch complex in French Guiana, the heavy-lift workhorse deployed its EUTELSAT 21B and Star One C3 spacecraft passengers during a 33-minute mission.
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(Source: Space-travel.com)
HOW DO ASTRONAUTS VOTE FROM SPACE? - While NASA astronauts are orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station, it doesnt mean they wont be able to participate in todays presidential election in the United States. Theyll have the option to vote just like any other American citizen, only from the most amazing polling place ever. How do they do it? Its actually a fairly simple process, Discovery News explains. More
(Source: SmartPlanet.com)
NASA HELPING BUILD SPACECRAFT JUST SO IT CAN BE DEMOLISHED - Work is under way to create a spacecraft that won't be rocketed into outer space but will be purposely destroyed on the ground.
DebriSat is a 110-pound (50 kilograms) satellite that's a double for a modern low-Earth orbit spacecraft in terms of its components, materials used, and fabrication procedures. But once fabricated and tested, DebriSat is doomed.
The spacecraft will be the target of a future hypervelocity impact experiment to examine the physical characteristics of debris created when two satellites collide.
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(Source: MSNBC)
RUSSIA LAUNCHES SATELLITES - Russia Saturday launched two satellites that will be used to survey Russian territory and track low-flying space objects, the country's space said.
The satellites successfully reached orbit Saturday, Roscosmos said.
The Russian Proton-M launch vehicle carrying Yamal-300K telecoms satellite and Luch 5B relay satellite was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan Saturday, RIA Novosti reported.
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(Source: UPI)
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