NORTHROP GRUMMAN TO ACQUIRE ORBITAL ATK - Northrop Grumman will acquire Orbital ATK in a $9.2 billion deal announced Sept. 18 that will give the combined company complementary capabilities in space and defense systems. Under the terms of the deal, Northrop Grumman will pay $7.8 billion in cash and assume $1.4 billion in debt to acquire Orbital ATK. Northrop Grumman is paying $134.50 per share of Orbital ATK stock, a premium of more than 20 percent over the stock’s price of $110 per share at the close of trading Sept. 15. News of the deal was first reported Sept. 17 by the Wall Street Journal. More (Source: SpaceNews - Sep 19)
CHINA TO LAUNCH FOUR BEIDOU-3 SATELLITES BY THE END OF 2017 - China-based Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) vice chief designer Ran Chengqi on Saturday said that four Beidou-3 satellites will be launched by late 2017 and a complete global satellites navigation system will be in place around 2020. The BDS was independently developed and operated by China with a vision to meet the needs of the country's national security and economic and social development. As a space infrastructure of national significance, the BDS provides all-time, all-weather and high-accuracy positioning, navigation and timing services to global users. More (Source: Doordarshan - Sep 18)
IRAN RELAUNCHES SPACE AMBITIONS AFTER UPROAR OVER SATELLITES - Iran's on-off space programme has received a boost after a recent satellite launch was seen to annoy Washington, with Tehran dusting off plans for a manned mission, perhaps with Moscow's assistance. "Ten skilled pilots are currently undergoing difficult and intensive training so that two of them... can be selected for the space launch," the head of the science ministry's aerospace research centre, Fathollah Omi, told the state broadcaster last week. He said the plan was to put humans into suborbital space "in less than eight years". More (Source: Geo News, Pakistan - Sep 17)
INDIA TO RESUME SATELLITE LAUNCHES BY DECEMBER - India will resume launching satellites in November or December, unfazed by the failure of its rocket in deploying a spare navigation satellite in the Earth's lower orbit on August 31, said a top official on Friday. "We will resume the launches by November or December, with one of the remote sensing satellites though we are yet to finalise with which," said A.S. Kiran Kumar, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). More (Source: Times Now - Sep 17)
NASA TV BROADCASTS DRAGON RELEASE EARLY SUNDAY - NASA Television coverage of the departure of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the International Space Station is set to begin early Sunday morning, Sept. 17 at 4:30 a.m. EDT. Watch the spacecraft departure live at http://www.nasa.gov/live Dragon has been loaded with more than 3,800 pounds of cargo and research to be returned to Earth and its internal hatch closed. The spacecraft is targeted for release at 4:40 a.m. More (Source: NASA - Sep 17)
NASA'S ROBOTIC 'SNIFFER' CONFIRMS SPACE STATION LEAK, REPAIR - In recent operations on the International Space Station, robotic operators were twice able to test and confirm the ability of the Robotic External Leak Locator (RELL) to "smell" in space. Using the RELL instruments, operators successfully located a small leak from the station's ammonia coolant loop, and confirmed that it was not a safety concern. Later they were able to return and more precisely characterize the leak. This valuable data helped station operators vent and isolate the leaking line from the coolant loop and successfully stop the leak. More (Source: Phys.org - Sep 16)
THIS ULTRATHIN CRAFT COULD SOON ENVELOP AND DESTROY SPACE JUNK - Think of the latest idea of collecting space junk as something akin to a hungry tiger pouncing on its prey. Aerospace Corporation says its Brane Craft will wrap itself around debris orbiting Earth and drag it back down through the atmosphere, causing it to burn up and never again threaten satellites or astronauts. The project recently received a second round of funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which funds far-out ideas that remain years away from launch — if they get there at all. More (Source: Space.com - Sep 15)
ORBITAL ATK BEGINS ASSEMBLY OF INDUSTRY'S FIRST COMMERCIAL IN-SPACE SATELLITE SERVICING SYSTEM - Orbital ATK reports significant progress on the industry's first commercial in-space satellite servicing system. The (MEV-1) spacecraft successfully completed its critical design review earlier this year and is now in production with about 75% of the platform and payload components already delivered to the company's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Virginia. The spacecraft will begin system-level testing in spring 2018 with launch planned late next year. MEV-1 will provide satellite life extension services to its anchor customer, Intelsat S.A., beginning in early 2019. More (Source: SpaceDaily - Sep 15)
NASA'S TERRA SATELLITE SPIES TYPHOON TALIM'S LARGE EYE - On Sept. 14 at 0215 UTC (Sept. 13 at 10:15 p.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer of MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Typhoon Talim. The image revealed a large, open eye surrounded by powerful thunderstorms as the storm moved through the East China Sea. The southern extent of Talim's clouds were over northern Taiwan at the time of the image. The MODIS image was created by NASA's MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Sept. 14, Typhoon Talim's maximum sustained winds were near 120 knots (138.1 mph/222 kph). More (Source: Phys.org - Sep 15)
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