SpaceX has launched its third Falcon 9 of the year. The rocket is carrying a pair of communications payloads for Eutelsat and Asia Broadcast Satellite.
Two communications satellites owned by SES are booked to fly into orbit — possibly from South Texas — on a pair of Falcon 9 rockets in 2017, giving SpaceX two payloads that could be assigned to launch from the new commercial spaceport, officials said Wednesday.
A communications payload owned by the Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES will ride the first launch of an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket in mid-2015, SES officials said Friday.
Last week’s successful launch of a Vega rocket with a European re-entry technology demonstrator marked the first of at least 11 flights planned this year by Arianespace to put communications satellites, Earth observatories and research probes into space.
Boeing Satellite Systems, Airbus Defense and Space and Orbital ATK have won orders from Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES for three new communications spacecraft for launch in 2017.
Russia’s Proton rocket took off on its first launch of the year Sunday with a commercial satellite to expand Inmarsat’s next-generation mobile communications network. Liftoff occurred at 1231 GMT (7:31 a.m. EST), and it took more than 15 hours to place the Inmarsat spacecraft in the correct orbit.
Fresh off the launch of its last four first-generation satellites, O3b Networks is in the early stages of selecting a builder and launch provider for a new series of spacecraft that will grow the company’s broadband communications capacity ten-fold, O3b’s chief executive said.
Firing into space from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a Russian Proton rocket guided a European television broadcast satellite into orbit Saturday. Check out photos of the Proton rocket’s nighttime liftoff with the Astra 2G satellite.
A communications satellite owned by the Qatari government will launch from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in late 2016, according to Qatar’s state-owned satellite company.