Recent launches of the giant Ariane 5 rocket have suffered excess vibration, causing severe delays to the rocket’s launch manifest. The problem with fairing vibrations has also affected launches made by the US’s United Launch Alliance and its Atlas 5 rockets. The vibrations occur prior to the separation of the rocket’s crucial fairings prior to […]
An Arianespace Soyuz rocket will orbit 36 OneWeb low earth orbiting satellites this week. Launch date is scheduled for March 25th subject to the usual weather and technical constraints. Arianespace will use Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome in the far East of the country for this, its fifth launch flight for OneWeb. The satellites will be placed […]
While much of the Airbus Group results released this week are focused on its aircraft business, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury told analysts that the past year represented the most challenging crisis to hit the aerospace industry. However, the satellite and rocket business figured in its end-of-year numbers (to December 31st 2020). The pressures from across […]
Arianespace carried out a total of 10 launches in 2020: three by Ariane 5, five by Soyuz and two by Vega. This was one more than in the previous year, despite the pandemic’s impact. Out of these 10 launches, seven were purely commercial. However, revenue was flat at €1.23 billion but Arianespace says it now […]
The European Commission (EC) is looking to build a global Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) broadband-by-satellite system to help bridge – and solve – the digital divide in connectivity. The European Commission has selected a consortium of European satellite manufacturers, operators and service providers, telco operators and launch service providers to study the design, development and […]
Arianespace will use Russia’s ’Far East’ cosmodrome at Vostochny to launch 36 OneWeb satellites into orbit today (December 18th), at 12:26 GMT (21:26 Russia Vostochny time). Arianespace is depending on a Soyuz rocket, often called the workhorse for the frequency of its use, for its Flight ST29, and the rocket was rolled out to its […]
Arianespace has confirmed it will launch Eutelsat’s 10B craft in 2022. Eutelsat 10B will be positioned at 10 degrees East and providing transmission links from the Americas to Asia. Built by Thales Alenia Space and based on its Spacebus NEO all-electric platform, it will carry Ku- and C-band payloads to ensure service continuity for existing […]
OneWeb, which should be emerging from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early December, has shipped a batch of satellites to the Russian launch site at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia’s Far East. Vostochny, which means ‘Eastern’ in Russian, is Russia’s second spaceport and designed to take the launch pressure from its main rocket site at […]
The European Space Agency (ESA) is asking its 13 member nations to stump up an extra €230 million ($268m) to aid the development of Arianespace’s next generation Ariane 6 rocket as well as its Vega-6 rocket. The bill could rise. To date the Ariane 6 R&D programme has already cost a budgeted €2.83 billion and […]
Russia is to invest $800 million on a new rocket system to compete directly with SpaceX and its reusable Falcon 9 launchers according to Russian news agency TASS. The Russian rocket system, called Amur, was signed with a contract between Russia’s Space Agency Roscosmos and the Progress Space Rocket Center on the conceptual design of […]