Satellite News

The European Space Agency (ESA) awarded a contract extension to Thales Alenia Space for the ExoMars mission to Mars — covering the mission’s Phase B2 (B2X2) and the second major segment of the program’s development to prepare the production phase.

Carried out jointly with NASA, ExoMars is the first mission in ESA’s Aurora exploration program and actually involves two different missions. The first, scheduled for 2016, will study the Martian atmosphere and demonstrate the feasibility of several key technologies for the entry, descent, and landing phases, necessary for the future human exploration of Mars. It will also provide data relay for communications between Earth and the Martian rovers in subsequent missions. The second mission, in 2018, includes a European rover capable of moving autonomously, taking samples of the soil down to a depth of two meters and analyzing its chemical, physical, and biological properties.

Thales Alenia Space Italia is the industrial prime contractor for the ExoMars program, as well as being in charge of the design of the Entry Descent Demonstrator Module (EDM), the development of the Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD), which includes the Pasteur Payload instruments, its integration on the Rover, the onboard computer and the EDM’s radar altimeter. Thales Alenia Space France is responsible for the design and integration of the Orbiter module.

The contract extension will cover all program activities through March 2011, allowing the ExoMars industrial team to carry out the System PDR (Preliminary Design Review) in autumn 2010. It will also enable finalizing the preliminary design of the two missions, planned for 2016 and 2018, and the spacecraft modules for the next development and production phase. In addition, detailed design, procurement, and testing can start for critical units.

Thales Alenia will deliver the first three satellites in the Globalstar second-generation constellation to the launch site.

The satellites will be orbited by Arianespace on a Soyuz launcher in October 2010 from Baikonour, with three other satellites in the first launch batch, to be delivered by the end of August 2010.

Thales Alenia Space will design and deliver 48 second-generation constellation low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to Globalstar to provide mobile phone and data satellite services.

The second-generation Globalstar satellites will each weigh 700kg and be fitted with 16 transponders from C to S band, and 16 receivers from L to C-band.

SEAKR Engineering, Inc., a privately held company, announced that Thales Alenia Space (TAS), the Iridium NEXT prime contractor, has awarded the communication processor for the Iridium NEXT constellation to SEAKR Engineering. The Iridium NEXT constellation will ultimately replace the existing Iridium constellation providing enhanced mobile satellite communication services worldwide, with the first Iridium NEXT satellite launches scheduled for the first quarter of 2015.

The communication processor plays the critical role in the Iridium NEXT constellation of providing MOD/DEMOD for the user RF links, the satellite-to-satellite cross links, and the satellite-to-gateway links on Earth. It is also responsible for managing the network and routing user traffic. The processor will support existing waveforms to provide a seamless replacement of the existing constellation while also providing advanced capabilities to improve speed, bandwidth, and flexibility.

The scalability and flexibility of the Iridium NEXT communication processor will also have the potential for new applications beyond voice communications and is being developed with government and commercial cooperative relationships in mind which could leverage Iridium’s unique constellation architecture.