February 2019

The first six spacecraft produced by the OneWeb Satellites joint venture of OneWeb and Airbus were successfully deployed into a circular low Earth orbit of approximately 1,000 km (altitude) and 87,77 deg. inclination on Arianespace’s first Soyuz mission of 2019 (and the launch services company’s second mission overall this year). http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022800

D-Orbit, an Italian service provider for the New Space sector, signed a contract with Planet, a US-based private Earth imaging company, for the launch and deployment of six Dove-series satellites. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022801

Rocket: Soyuz 2-1a; Payload: six OneWeb satellites; Date: 27 February 2019, 2137 UTC; Launch site: Sinnamary, French Guiana. The flight lasted one hour and 22 minutes. The first two satellites were deployed 63 minutes after liftofffollowed by the last four 82 minutes after liftoff. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022700

After seven years of development at the Technical University Dresden, the spin-off Morpheus Space has successfully ignited the world’s smallest ion beam thruster on the "UWE-4" nano-satellite. Four of the thumb-sized thrusters are located on UWE-4, the 1 kg nano-satellite of the University of Würzburg. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022701

OneWeb announced that it has secured its first customer contracts to deliver its high speed, low latency, global communications services. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022702

Arianespace’s Soyuz mission that will orbit global satellite operator OneWeb’s first six spacecraft has been authorised for launch on 27 February from the Spaceport in French Guiana. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022600

NASA has selected a new mission that will help scientists understand and, ultimately, forecast the vast space weather system around our planet. The new experiment will, for the first time, obtain global observations of an important driver of space weather in a dynamic region of Earth’s upper atmosphere that can cause interference with radio and…

HawkEye 360 Inc. has successfully commissioned its three Pathfinder satellites and begun geolocating radio frequency (RF) signals. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022602

Cobham SATCOM announced that it would provide L-band ground infrastructure for Inmarsat’s I-6 constellation, currently set for first launch in 2020. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022603

Northrop Grumman Corporation announced that the company successfully completed its 10th cargo supply mission to the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract. http://www.sat-nd.com/archive/?id=2019022500