Microcom's Space Newsfeed 4 January 2004<br />Space Industry News from Around the World<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Web resources from Microcom Systems:<br /><br />Satellite Industry Links: the largest free satellite and space industry directory on the web
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http://www.spacenewsfeed.co.uk/ratecard.html<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Contents<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Satcoms:<br />Lockheed Martin Awarded Contract For A2100 Satellite<br /><br />Science:<br />Major Mars Express Scheduled Orbit Change Achieved<br />NASA's Spirit Probe Safely Lands on Mars<br />No Signal from Beagle 2<br />Stardust Rendezvous With Comet Wild 2<br /><br />Launches:<br />Express-AM22<br />Double Star 1 (Tan Ce 1)<br /><br />Business:<br />Globecomm Systems Announces US$ 6.75 Million Equity Private Placement<br /><br />Products and Services:<br />KVH Introduces World-wide Ships Security Alert System Solution for Mariners<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Bolton Associates - Corporate Strategies applies 21st. Century thinking for the Earth Observation, SatCom and Environment Industries that penetrate new markets using creative commercial Risk models and innovation.<br /><br />Visit us at
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http://www.microcomsystems.co.uk/ads/EOConsult.ppt [131Kb]<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Space Bookshop - books for space professionals.<br />
http://www.satelliteonthenet.co.uk/bookshop.html<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Satcoms<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Lockheed Martin Awarded Contract For A2100 Satellite<br /><br />(30 December 2003) Lockheed Martin has been awarded a contract to build an A2100 geosynchronous satellite, marking the fifth new commercial satellite order received by its Commercial Space Systems business during 2003.<br /><br />Details of the contract signed last week and the spacecraft customer will be disclosed at a later date.<br /><br />Other contracts awarded in 2003 include:<br /><br />* April: JCSAT-9, awarded by JSAT Corporation of Japan<br />* June: Astra 1KR and 1L, awarded by SES Astra<br />* September: EchoStar X, awarded by EchoStar Communications Corp<br /><br />(source: Lockheed Martin)<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Science<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Major Mars Express Scheduled Orbit Change Achieved<br /><br />(30 December 2003) On the 30th December, at 09:00 CET, the Mars Express flight control team at ESOC prepared and executed a critical manoeuvre, bringing the spacecraft from an equatorial orbit into a polar orbit around Mars.<br /><br />All commands were transmitted to Mars Express via ESA's new Deep Space Station in New Norcia, Australia. The main engine of Mars Express was fired for four minutes to turn the spacecraft into a new direction, at a distance of 188,000 kilometres from Mars and about 160 million kilometres from Earth. On 4 January 2004, this new polar orbit will be reduced even further.<br /><br />In a polar orbit, Mars Express can now start to prepare its scientific observation mission as planned, working much like an 'Earth-observation satellite' but around Mars. From the second half of January 2004, the orbiter's instruments will be able to scan the atmosphere, the surface and parts of the subsurface structure of Mars with unmatched precision.<br /><br />The MARSIS radar, for example, will be able to scan as far as four kilometres below the surface, looking for underground water or ice. The High Resolution Stereo Camera will take high-precision pictures of the planet and will begin a comprehensive 3D cartography of Mars. Also, several spectrometers will try to unveil the mysteries of Martian mineralogy and the atmosphere, as well as influences from the solar wind or seasonal changes.<br /><br />The change of orbit by the Mars Express orbiter will allow increasingly closer looks at the Beagle 2 landing site, which measures 31 kilometres by 5 kilometres. In this narrowing polar orbit, the orbiter will fly directly over the landing site at an altitude of 315 kilometres on 7 January 2004, at 13:13 CET. The reduced distance, the ideal angle of overflight and originally foreseen communication interfaces between the 'mother' and 'baby' will increase the probability of catching signals from the ground.<br /><br />(source: ESA)<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />NASA's Spirit Probe Safely Lands on Mars<br /><br />(4 January 2004) Early on Sunday morning, January 4th, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit touched down on Mars. In three weeks time, its sister lander Opportunity will follow it.<br /><br />Spirit landed in Gusev Crater, fifteen degrees south of the Martian equator. This crater has, apparently, a dried up river bed flowing into it and so is seen as a potential site to search for signs of past life.<br /><br />Following re-entry through the Martian atmosphere, the lander was slowed by a parachute and was protected during landing by a giant air bag. After coming to rest the air bag deflated, the lander righted itself and protective panels deployed, releasing the rover.<br /><br />The probe has already been in contact with mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has begun sending back high quality images of the Martian surface.<br /><br />The rover will have a primary mission lasting at least three months on the Martian surface during which time it will travel several hundred metres across the surface.<br /><br />Remote sensing instruments are mounted on a rover mast including high-resolution colour stereo panoramic cameras and an infrared spectrometer for determining the mineralogy of rocks and soils. When interesting scientific targets are identified, the rover will drive over to them and perform detailed investigations with instruments mounted on its robotic arm.<br /><br />Rover instruments include a microscopic imager, to see micron-size particles and textures; an alpha-particle/x-ray spectrometer, for measuring elemental composition; and a Moessbauer spectrometer for determining the mineralogy of iron bearing rocks. Each rover will carry a rock abrasion tool, the equivalent of a geologist's rock hammer, to remove the weathered surfaces from rocks and analyse their interior.<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />No Signal from Beagle 2<br /><br />(3 January 2004) Transmissions from Beagle 2, the European Mars probe which should have landed on Mars on Christmas day, have not yet been detected.<br /><br />Project scientists and engineers are not completely without hope, however. The best chance of contact with the probe will come in a few days time when Mars Express, the probe's mother ship which was intended to act as the relay station for transmissions from the probe, flies directly over the landing site at low altitude.<br /><br />So far several unsuccessful attempt to detect signals from the probe have been made by NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft which is in orbit around Mars, and the Jodrell Bank radio telescope in England using a special receiver designed to detect transmissions from Beagle 2.<br /><br />Adding to the concern of the project team is a new image of the landing area which show a previously undiscovered 1 km diameter meteor crater right in the centre of the landing zone. If the tiny Martian lander was exactly on target is could be hidden inside the crater, unable to transmit through the crater walls. Alternatively, it could have landed on steeply sloping ground strewn with large boulders which could have damaged the probe on landing, made it difficult for the probe to unfold its solar arrays and antenna after landing or its antenna may just be pointing in the wrong direction because of the slope.<br /><br />It is possible that the probe's internal clock is simply commanding the probe to transmit its signals at the wrong times when either Mars Odyssey or Jodrell Bank are in the wrong positions to detect the signals.<br /><br />The best chances to contact the probe will begin on January 4 when Mars Express has reached low orbit and starts to over-fly the landing site at an altitude of between 200 and 250 km, taking high resolution images and listening for transmissions.<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Stardust Rendezvous With Comet Wild 2<br /><br />(2 January 2004) Stardust, NASA's first dedicated sample return mission to a comet, passed a huge milestone on the 2nd of January by successfully navigating through the particle and gas-laden coma around comet Wild 2. During the hazardous traverse, the spacecraft flew within 240 kilometres of the comet, catching samples of comet particles and scoring detailed pictures of Wild 2's pockmarked surface.<br /><br />The collected particles, stowed in a sample return capsule onboard Stardust, will be returned to Earth for in-depth analysis. That dramatic event will occur on January 15, 2006, when the capsule makes a soft landing at the US Air Force Utah Test and Training Range. The microscopic particle samples of comet and interstellar dust collected by Stardust will be taken to the planetary material curatorial facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, for analysis.<br /><br />Stardust documented its passage through the hailstorm of comet debris with two scientific instruments that scrutinised the size, number and composition of dust particles in the coma - the region of dust and gas surrounding the comet's nucleus. Along with these instruments, the spacecraft's optical navigation camera was active during the flyby and provided images of the dark mass of the comet's nucleus. Data from all three was recorded onboard Stardust and beamed back to Earth soon after the encounter.<br /><br />The chain of events began nine days out from the comet when Stardust deployed its "cometary catcher's mitt," a tennis-racket-shaped particle catcher of more than 1,000 square centimetres of collection area filled with a material called aerogel. Made of pure silicon dioxide, like sand and glass, aerogel is a thousand times less dense than glass because it is 99.8 percent air. The high-tech material has enough "give" in it to slow and stop particles without altering them radically. After the sample has been collected, the collector folded down into a return capsule, which closed like a clamshell to secure the sample for a soft landing in January 2006.<br /><br />Scientists believe in-depth terrestrial analysis of the samples will reveal much about comets and the earliest history of the solar system. Chemical and physical information locked within the cometary particles could be the record of the formation of the planets and the materials from which they were made.<br /><br />Stardust has travelled about 3.22 billion kilometres since its launch on February 7, 1999. As it closed the final gap with its cometary quarry, it endured a bombardment of particles surrounding the nucleus of comet Wild 2. To protect Stardust against the blast of expected cometary particles and rocks, the spacecraft rotated so it was flying in the shadow of its "Whipple Shields." The shields are named for American astronomer Dr. Fred L. Whipple, who, in the 1950s, came up with the idea of shielding spacecraft from high-speed collisions with the bits and pieces ejected from comets. The system includes two bumpers at the front of the spacecraft - which protect Stardust's solar panels - and another shield protecting the main spacecraft body. Each shield is built around composite panels designed to disperse particles as they impact, augmented by blankets of a ceramic cloth called Nextel that further dissipate and spread particle debris.<br /><br />(source: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory)<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Launches<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Express-AM22<br /><br />Launched: 28 December 2003<br />Site: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan<br />Launcher: Proton K / Blok DM<br />Orbit: GEO: 53° E<br />International Number: 2003-060A<br />Name: Express-AM22<br />Owner: Russian Satellite Communications Company<br />Contractor: NPO PM<br /><br />Express-AM22 is a commercial geostationary communications satellite owned and operated by the Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC). It is the first of five Express-AM series satellites that will be launched by 2005.<br /><br />Express-AM22 will provide digital TV and radio broadcasting, telephony, broadband Internet access, VSAT services, internal and corporate networking, multimedia (distant learning, telemedicine etc.). Express-AM22 carries 1 L band transponder, 9 C band transponders and 18 Ku band transponders. The satellite's design lifetime is 12 years.<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Double Star 1 (Tan Ce 1)<br /><br />Launched: 29 December 2003<br />Site: Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sichuan province, China<br />Launcher: Long March 2C/CTS<br />International Number: 2003-061A<br />Name: Double Star 1 (Tan Ce 1)<br />Owner: Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) and European Space Agency (ESA)<br /><br />Double Star 1 is the first of a pair of scientific satellites launched as a co-operative venture between the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) and European Space Agency (ESA). The satellites will study the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field. The second satellite in the pair, Double Star 2, is due for launch in June 2004.<br /><br />A key aspect of Europe's participation in the Double Star project is the inclusion of eight instruments, seven of which are identical to those currently flying on the four Cluster spacecraft. A further eight experiments have been provided by Chinese institutes. The Double Star satellites will provide complementary information to that already provided by Cluster. The positions and orbit of the two Double Star satellites have been carefully defined to allow the study of the magnetosphere on a larger scale than that possible with Cluster alone.<br /><br />(source: ESA)<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Business<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Globecomm Systems Announces US$ 6.75 Million Equity Private Placement<br /><br />(31 December 2003) Globecomm Systems Inc has executed definitive agreements for a private placement of equity securities to institutional investors totalling US$ 6.75 million in gross proceeds.<br /><br />The net proceeds, expected to be approximately US$ 6.2 million, will be used for working capital and general corporate purposes, as well as for strategic purposes such as selected acquisitions that may be considered in the future to expand its product and service offerings. CE Unterberg, Towbin acted as the exclusive placement agent for the financing.<br /><br />The private placement agreement provides that the Company will issue 1.5 million shares of common stock and warrants to purchase up to 750,000 shares of common stock at an exercise price of US$ 5.50 per share. The warrants are exercisable beginning July 1, 2004 and expire on December 31, 2008.<br /><br />(source: Globecomm Systems)<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Products and Services<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />KVH Introduces World-wide Ships Security Alert System Solution for Mariners<br /><br />(30 December 2003) In the face of an increasing threat of terrorism at sea, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and US Coast Guard (USCG) have established new regulations to ensure that all large vessels are equipped with a ships security alert system (SSAS) capable of alerting authorities with just the push of a button to hijacking, piracy, or terrorism attempts.<br /><br />To help ship owners and crews maximise their safety and meet this requirement easily and affordably, KVH Industries, Inc has introduced the eTrac SSAS. This small, integrated communication system uses the Inmarsat mini-C communication system and real-time GPS position reporting to provide world-wide alert and fleet tracking capabilities and is fully compliant with IMO and USCG requirements. In contrast with other SSAS solutions, the eTrac SSAS is easy to install and has no monthly or other service charges.<br /><br />Compliance with the new regulations - IMO Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Resolution XI-2/6 and USCG Regulation 2003-14749 - has become time-critical for commercial shipping. Under these regulations, every vessel 500 gross tons or larger that seeks to enter a US port after July 1, 2004, must comply with the SSAS requirements or be denied entry, raising the spectre of a disruption in international shipping to and from the United States.<br /><br />The eTrac SSAS is very easy to use - just press one of the two panic buttons to instantly send an alert containing such information as vessel identification, time, and precise location. The rugged KVH eTrac SSAS stands less than 15 cm high and weighs just over 1 kg and can be installed easily. The eTrac SSAS antenna is a fully integrated system, containing a transceiver, antenna, and a 12-channel GPS receiver. The two panic buttons can be placed as far as 50 m away from an interconnection box to make sure an alert can easily be sounded should the need arise. With no monthly subscriptions or transmission costs for emergency messages, eTrac SSAS offers an extremely low lifetime cost. By comparison, alternative technologies require a monthly fee whether the system is used or not.<br /><br />The eTrac can also be equipped with vessel monitoring software for regular position reporting, allowing fleet managers to have world-wide fleet tracking and polling capabilities. The combination of Inmarsat's mini-C and GPS service and KVH's reliability makes eTrac SSAS an invaluable safety tool for any commercial vessel or megayacht and its crew, and offers a cost-effective solution to ensure compliance with IMO and USCG regulations.<br /><br />(source: KVH Industries)<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Press releases should be sent to: newsfeed@microcomsystems.co.uk<br /><br />**********************************************************************<br /><br />Microcom makes no charge for this service and makes no payments for the use of material. 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