NASA announced the impossibility to reactivate the radar of its SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) satellite. The instrument ceased to function on July 7 and NASA engineers had been trying to reactivate it for weeks but without success. SMAP is an observatory designed to monitor the moisture present in the top 5 centimeters (2 inches) of soil and now will continue its mission in a limited way.
A few hours ago, the Sentinel-2A satellite, the second of the Copernicus / GMES program, was launched from the spaceport of Kourou, French Guiana, on a Vega rocket. Soon, the satellite regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage and started sending signals. Hours later it started deploying its solar panels.
The mini-shuttle X-37B blasted off atop an Atlas V 501 rocket from Cape Canaveral. The launch seems to have gone well but ULA (United Launch Alliance), which manages it, broadcat the images providing information on the progress of the operations just for a few minutes. That’s because the mission of this spaceplane is carried out by the US Air Force and is partially covered by military secret.
It was almost noon yesterday in Kazakhstan when the MexSat-1 satellite, also called Centenario to celebrate the centenary of the Mexican Revolution, was launched on a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After about 10 minutes, however, something malfunctioned in the rocket’s third stage, causing the loss of the satellite.
The second of the two satellites of the Galileo constellation launched into a wrong orbit on August 22, 2014 has been recovered. In mid-January a series of 14 maneuvers was started that altered its orbit until it became the same as its “twin” after about six weeks. Now these two satellites have a mirror orbit, on opposite sides of the planet.
