EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – Intelsat S.A. has accepted its second Boeing 702MP (Medium Power) satellite, Intelsat 21, which was launched Aug. 18 and is enhancing Intelsat’s broadcast and communications services throughout four continents. Boeing introduced the 702MP spacecraft line in 2009 to meet customer requirements for satellites with 6 to 12 kilowatts of power. The…

The first Martian rock NASA’s Curiosity rover has reached out to touch presents a more varied composition than expected from previous missions. The rock also resembles some unusual rocks from Earth’s interior. The rover team used two instruments on Curiosity to study the chemical makeup of the football-size rock called “Jake Matijevic.” The results support…

The Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft was berthed to the International Space Station at 8:03 a.m., CDT, Oct 9, a key milestone in a new era of commercial spaceflight. The delivery flight is the first contracted resupply mission by the company under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract. “I want to congratulate SpaceX and…

NASA and its international partners have announced an agreement to send two crew members to the International Space Station on a one-year mission designed to collect valuable scientific data needed to send humans to new destinations in the solar system. The crew members, one American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut, will launch and land in…

Lockheed Martin is making steady progress in a key test phase on GeoEye’s next-generation, high-resolution imaging satellite, GeoEye-2, as IKONOS, the world’s first commercial remote sensing spacecraft marks 13 years of outstanding services for GeoEye’s customers around the globe. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company is developing GeoEye-2 under a fixed-price contract with GeoEye. The satellite…

NASA’s Swift satellite recently detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole. “Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they’re essentially once-a-mission events and this is the…

NASA engineers, student interns and amateur radio enthusiasts around the world are listening for signals from a small, cube-shaped satellite launched into orbit from the International Space Station Thursday. The satellite, dubbed “TechEdSat,” was released at 11:44 a.m., EDT, Oct. 4 from the new Japanese Small Satellite Orbital Deployer aboard the space station. TechEdSat measures…

Twenty-three microgravity experiments designed by participants of NASA’s Student Spaceflight Experiment Program will become part of space history Oct. 7. They will be launched to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon, the first commercially developed and built American spacecraft to fly a resupply cargo resupply mission to the station. Twelve of the SSEP…

NASA has selected Akima Logistics Services LLC of Anchorage, Alaska to receive a contract to support the Logistics Management Services at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The contract has a maximum value of $48 million. This is an indefinite-delivery- indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price, time and material hybrid contract that begins Monday, Oct. 1….