#HELSINKI — #China launched its Queqiao-2 relay satellite Tuesday to support upcoming lunar far side and south polar missions.

A Long March 8 rocket lifted off from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 8:31 p.m. Eastern, March 19 (0031 UTC March 20). The China National Space Administration (CNSA) confirmed the Queqiao-2 satellite was on a trajectory towards the moon around 40 minutes after launch.

CNSA stated Queqiao-2 had deployed its solar arrays and was in its predetermined orbit with a perigee of 200 kilometers and an apogee of 420,000 kilometers.

The 1,200-kilogram satellite carries a 4.2-meter parabolic antenna and is part of China’s plans for future lunar exploration and a stepping stone towards building a lunar base in the 2030s.

The spacecraft will enter a highly elliptical lunar orbit inclined by 55 degrees once it reaches the moon. The orbit is specially designed to support China’s Chang’e-6 lunar far side sample.

#WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency has awarded three contracts worth a quarter of a billion dollars to develop a pair of navigation missions, including one to test the feasibility of a low Earth orbit #satellite constellation.

ESA announced the award of the contracts for its FutureNAV program March 19, with a combined value of 233.4 million euros ($253 million). The contracts cover two missions, called Genesis and LEO-PNT.

“With Genesis and LEO-PNT we are responding to rapidly growing needs for more resilient and precise navigation and ensuring Europe leads global satellite navigation,” Javier Benedicto, ESA’s director of navigation, said in a statement about the contracts

#SANFRANCISCO — #German startup #Blackwave raised $6.6 million in a seed extension round to expand production of carbon fiber structures.

The Munich-based startup announced the investment round March 19 as well as plans to offer carbon fiber high-pressure tanks for launch vehicles, satellites and other space-related applications.

“We are more than happy to finally unveil what has been in the making for the last 18 months and what nobody has addressed so far: commercial-off-the-shelf pressure vessels for launchers and satellites that are lightweight, affordable and available within days,” Blackwaves CEO Bastian Behrens said in a statement.

#WASHINGTON — Loft Orbital is partnering with #SkyServe to leverage Earth observation and edge computing capabilities on a newly launched #satellite.

The two companies announced March 19 that SkyServe will use Loft Orbital’s YAM-6 spacecraft, launched on the Transporter-10 rideshare mission March 4, to demonstrate artificial intelligence capabilities by analyzing optical and hyperspectral imagery the satellite collects.

For what the companies call Mission Denali, SkyServe, an Indian startup, will install its SkyServe STORM platform on the spacecraft. Customers can then deploy AI models on the platform to perform analysis of imagery the satellite collects in real time

#WASHINGTON — Spanish defense contractor Indra has teamed up with local air navigation services provider Enaire to order two #satellites next year to test their proposed air traffic surveillance and communications constellation.

Their joint venture, Startical, said March 18 it has ordered a 20-kilogram satellite from GomSpace and a 110-kilogram satellite from Kongsberg NanoAvionics — the first of more than 270 spacecraft planned for low Earth orbit.

Startical said the #GomSpace satellite would be deployed in early 2025, followed by NanoAvionics around the middle of the year, but did not disclose launch details.

#WASHINGTON — Manufacturers of traditional geostationary communications satellites insist demand for their products is not going away thanks to technological advances and interest in multi-orbit solutions.

During a panel at the #Satellite 2024 conference here March 18, executives with several manufacturers acknowledged demand for their satellites had dropped significantly from historical levels of 20 to 25 orders a year but that the market itself was not dying.

“GEO’s not dead,” said Chris Johnson, chief executive of Maxar Space Systems. “By no means is it dead, but it has evolved.”

#WASHINGTON — Astranis said March 18 it has sold a small geostationary broadband satellite slated to launch in 2025 to Orbith, a remote connectivity provider based in Argentina.

The Californian manufacturer has now announced customers for all five satellites in Block 3, its third batch of spacecraft due to launch together on an undisclosed rocket.

Orbith currently leases capacity from satellite operators to connect customers across Latin America, but says availability and prices have held back the company’s growth in countries such as Argentina.

At around 400 kilograms, washing machine-sized satellites from Astranis are scaled for smaller, regional coverage and are cheaper than typical geostationary spacecraft weighing thousands of kilograms — although they also have about half the design life at eight years.

#WASHINGTON — After years of delays, #Maxar Technologies is finally on the home stretch to launching the first two satellites of its next-generation #WorldView Legion Earth-imaging constellation.

The company announced March 18 that the first two of six planned high-resolution WorldView Legion satellites have arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, paving the way for liftoff as soon as April aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

This marks a crucial milestone for the WorldView Legion program, which has suffered repeated setbacks since Maxar started developing the spacecraft in 2017.

The Legion program is vital for Maxar to augment its existing fleet of three WorldView and one GeoEye electro-optical imagery #satellites. The company in 2021 deorbited its newest WorldView satellite which suffered an on-orbit hardware failure and could no longer collect usable imagery

#HELSINKI — #China is set to launch its Queqiao-2 communications relay satellite to support upcoming moon missions late March 19.

A Long March 8 rocket was vertically transferred to a launch pad at Wenchang #Satellite Launch Center early March 17. The rocket will launch Queqiao-2 towards the moon in preparation for the Chang’e-6 lunar far side sample return mission in May.

Queqiao-2 has a mass of 1,200 kilograms and is equipped with a 4.2-meter parabolic antenna. Its elliptical orbit will allow it to maintain communication with both Earth and lunar far side, which never faces the Earth.

#WASHINGTON — Turion Space’s debut satellite should be ready to start imaging objects in space by May after nearly a year of commissioning in low Earth orbit (LEO), according to CEO and cofounder Ryan Westerdahl.

The three-year-old Californian space situational awareness (SSA) startup first opened the door to the imaging sensor on its 32-kilogram Droid.001 spacecraft a couple of months ago, Westerdahl said, following its SpaceX launch in June.

“We wanted to make sure we had good control of the satellite before doing it because we didn’t want to damage the optical sensor,” he told SpaceNews in an interview, “like for example if all of a sudden the satellite was staring at the sun.”