For planet earth and beyond
8 Mar 2016 – ESA and UK satellite operator Inmarsat are forging ahead with the development of air–ground communications via satellite as part of Europe’s plan to modernise air traffic management across the continent and beyond.
7 March 2016 – Using GNSS for autonomous station-keeping is a significant breakthrough that should reduce operational costs and improve pointing performance of telecoms satellites. With the support of ESA, Thales Alenia Space Italia has developed a GNSS receiver module that can be hosted on a spacecraft's on-board computer.
UPDATE: The deadline for submitting a Notification of Intent has been extended until 23 March 2016 12:00pm.
26 February 2016 – Over the past two years both the European Council and the EU Competitiveness Council have called for the preparation of the next generation of governmental satellite communications, through close cooperation among Member States, EDA, the EC and ESA.
22 February 2016 – ARTES is one of four ESA programmes taking part in the Agency's new Space4Rail initiative, which addresses how the challenges and needs of the rail sector can be met by the use of space-based solutions.
1 February 2016 – Multiple spot-beam antennas are becoming an increasingly important feature of today's telecom satellites. In acknowledgement of this, Airbus Defence and Space UK initiated the development of the Large Ku-band Multi-spot Feed Array (LMFA) with the support of ESA through the ARTES Competitiveness & Growth programme.
1 February 2016 – A new satellite to be launched in April by the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC) will include two AIS receivers that will improve the identification and tracking of ships anywhere on the seas.
19 January 2016 – A new SAT-AIS antenna developed with the support of ESA combines higher-gain with a smaller footprint. Clever engineering has reduced its overall size so that up to five could be hosted on a single cubic-metre minisatellite.
13 January 2016 — The Hispasat AG1 satellite, based on the new SmallGEO platform, has successfully completed the first step of the environmental test campaign. The team will continue the ground test programme to complete the design and performance verifications prior to shipping the satellite to Kourou, French Guiana, for launch later this year.
9 December 2015 – After a year-long wait for a Proton launcher to become available, the EDRS-A laser communications payload and its Eutelsat host satellite have arrived at the Baikonur cosmodrome and are being prepared for a late-January launch.
