Satellite News

Astrium won a contract worth 55.2 million euros ($72 million) from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology(VAST) to manufacture and launch an Earth observation optical satellite system.

The satellite, dubbed the Vietnam Natural Resources, Environment and Disaster Monitoring Satellite (VNREDSat-1), will be capable of capturing images with a resolution of 2.5 meters, and Astrium also will provide the associated ground control, image receiving and processing stations, which will be integrated in Vietnam’s Environment and Natural Resources Monitoring System monitoring station, a multi-satellite ground facility operated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

The contract follows an intergovernmental agreement on space cooperation signed in November between France and Vietnam. The deal includes a cooperation and training program for 15 Vietnamese engineers that will help build the satellite.

The British government has selected a consortium of companies led by Astrium to create an Earth observation satellite operations and data-processing center at a new facility established in Britain by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The EO Hub, funded at 4.9 million British pounds ($7.5 million), is schduled to be operational by March 2011. The team setting up the facility includes Vega, an engineering services company; small-satellite builder Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.; Infoterra, which commercializes Earth observation products; and Astrium, which owns Infoterra.

The British Science and Technology Facilities Council contracted with the Astrium-led group to create the EO Hub at the International Space Innovation Centre in Harwell, England, which was recently created by ESA.

ESA officials had said that building a facility in Britain should stimulate space investment in that country and ultimately support future British contributions to the 18-nation agency.

The British Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is taking part in the financing of the EO Hub, as is the industrial consortium.

British Science Minister David Willets said the EO Hub is “the important first step in making the International Space Innovation Centre a reality, linking regional space capabilities and promoting knowledge-sharing between academia and industry.”

In a separate announcement July 20, Astrium said its Infoterra division of Britain will download and process data from the ERS-2 and Envisat radar Earth observation satellites under a three-year contract valued at 7.5 million euros ($9.7 million).

The contract with the Farnborough Multi-Mission Processing and Archiving Facility, acting on behalf of ESA, prolongs the service already offered by Infoterra, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Astrium Services.

ERS-2, already well past its scheduled service life, is scheduled for retirement in 2011. Envisat, which has also surpassed its design life, will be operated through 2013.

Under the contract, Infoterra will manage downloading and processing images from ESA’s Swarm mission to study the Earth’s magnetic field. The three Swarm satellites are scheduled for launch in mid-2011 and to operate in low Earth orbit for four years.

The Astrium teams on site at the Guiana Space Centre are busy with final preparations for the scheduled launch of the two satellites on 23 June 2010.

Ariane 5 will deliver in orbit two Astrium-built satellites: the Arabsat 5A communications satellite for Arabsat and the COMS satellite for the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

Arabsat 5A is the fifth Eurostar satellite built by Astrium for Arabsat. The multi-mission satellite will provide additional transmission capacity at the Arabsat 30.5 East position in both C-band and Ku-band for a wide range of satellite communications services.

Arabsat 5A is based on the Eurostar E3000 platform and is equipped with a payload that includes 26 active transponders operating in the C-band and another 24 in the Ku-band. The satellite has 12 kW of onboard power and is designed for a service life of 15 years.