Turkey’s most advanced Earth observation satellite will ride a four-stage Vega rocket into polar orbit nearly 435 miles (700 kilometers) above Earth to begin collecting high-resolution images for Turkish military and security authorities.
The ascent will take nearly an hour following launch from French Guiana at 1351:44 GMT (8:51:44 a.m. EST) Monday.
Armed with $460 million in fresh financing to grow its broadband communications capacity, O3b Networks has selected Thales Alenia Space to build eight new satellites and Arianespace to launch at least four of them aboard a Soyuz rocket in 2018.
A hefty European-built satellite destined to broadcast high-definition television to the Middle East and a U.S.-made relay station programmed to serve Latin America and North Atlantic air routes soared into space Thursday aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
Blaming a slew of technical snags and “avoidable errors,” NASA officials said Tuesday that the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, already years behind schedule, will be delayed to 2020, potentially pushing the mission’s development cost above an $8 billion cap mandated by Congress.