Satellite and Communication Systems

[Ethyl]

ISRO to bag more global orders for building satellites

BANGALORE — Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which recently signed a commercial contract with European firm EADS Astrium to build a communications satellite, was on the verge of bagging two more global orders for building satellites.


Speaking after inaugurating the country's largest satellite integration and test facility in Bangalore, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said satellites to built as part of the joint venture would pave the way for ISRO to grab a major share in the global satellite building market.

He pointed out that the global market's expectations from ISRO were increasing at a time when the organisation's hands were already full with domestic demands.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/April/subcontinent_April710.xml&section=subcontinent&col=

[Ethyl]

South America, Asia benefit from repositioned U.S. weather satellites


South American meteorologists are getting a boost from space: A U.S. weather satellite long used for tracking hurricanes and other wild weather will soon be moved over a continent plagued by its own costly natural disasters.

In October, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to reposition an aging but reliable 9-year-old satellite high over the Brazilian Amazon to provide full-time coverage for forecasters who now weather long periods without regular images during U.S. hurricane season.


The satellite _ a sport utility vehicle-sized piece of equipment currently hovering about 22,300 miles (35,881 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean _ is part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series, which has brought Americans views of Hurricane Katrina, El Nino-fueled storms and other meteorological phenomena.


The satellite aid to South America and another that was repositioned in 2003 to get a better view of Japan are NOAA's contributions to improving the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, a coalition of more than 60 countries working to unify Earth observation by 2015 and improve environmental policies around the planet.


"We hope it sets an example for South America and others to share their observations to make our total global forecasting work a little better," said Gregory Withee, assistant administrator of NOAA Satellites and Information Services. "We're all in this together ... because weather is global."


The satellites _ the first GOES was launched in the 1970s _ deliver both visual and infrared images, and are used to monitor storms, detect sea surface temperatures and wildland fires. They also can take cloud temperatures, show ozone distribution and track the conditions that can produce aircraft icing.


South America has received images from existing GOES-series satellites for decades, but those have focused primarily on the United States and its immediate surroundings. So whenever a storm kicks up in the Northern Hemisphere, the satellite that usually delivers images to South America at least every 30 minutes instead rapidly scans the northern trouble spot, reducing South American images to as little as once every 3 hours.


During U.S. hurricane season, this happens as much as 40 percent of the time, NOAA officials said.


In weather terms, such gaps can be an "eternity," said 1st Lt. Ricardo Valenti, who oversees a roomful of Air Force and civilian contractors tracking weather at the Argentine National Meteorological Service.


A hailstorm can develop in minutes, taking out a farmer's entire soybean crop, he said. An undetected ash cloud, expelled by a volcano during a gap in satellite coverage, can stop a jet engine over the Andes.


"We can't monitor what we can't see," Valenti said. "There's no anger. We accept that it's like this. But that's why we made the request."


Last year, South American meteorologists formally requested that the satellite be repositioned, rather than the more likely scenario of keeping it as an in-orbit spare after the launch later this spring of the 13th GOES-series satellite, which will continue monitoring U.S. storms.


Argentina and Brazil are the only South American nations with government satellites, yet they lack weather forecasting capabilities, said Conrado Varotto, executive director of the Argentine National Commission for Space Activities. Argentina's only satellite, for example, takes photos for agricultural purposes, or assesses damage after disaster strikes, he said.


While Russia, China, Japan and richer nations in Europe have environmental satellites, poorer regions can't afford to launch ones as capable as a GOES, which costs roughly US$400 million (£á330.74 million) to put in orbit _ more than eleven times the Argentine space program's annual budget.


"This is important for South America because they need data," NOAA's administrator, Vice Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher Jr., told The Associated Press. "By having continuous coverage it will help provide warnings in time to save lives and protect property."


Latin America has no shortage of natural disasters, and its recovery efforts are strapped for cash. The United States donated US$1.4 million (£á1.16 million) in relief and disaster preparedness to South America in fiscal year 2005, according to the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.


Flooding and landslides in Venezuela, Guyana and Colombia in February 2005 killed 100 people and left tens of thousands without homes. In March 2004, what some meteorologists considered the first recorded South Atlantic hurricane ravaged the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, rendering 2,000 people homeless. Venezuela's flooding and landslides in 1999, that country's worst natural disaster in decades, killed thousands.


The repositioned satellite should help provide more warning of brewing storms. But it's a temporary solution. Similar satellites have broken down unexpectedly within two years of launch, and most have been retired after 10 years. Although the satellite destined for South America still works perfectly and has 11 more years of fuel, it was launched in 1997 and its life span is unpredictable.


Additionally, the U.S. still owns the satellite and it is subject to being moved in case another satellite fails. Still, Varotto is grateful for the satellite and NOAA's plans to shoulder the "minimal" cost of maintaining it in orbit.


"This is a typical win-win situation. For the U.S., it isn't costing them a cent more," Varotto said, "but from the point of view of the benefits to South America, it's as if the United States made the decision to earmark millions of dollars for the region."

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=37516

[Ethyl]

Iran's space project:

This is a report by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger on Iranian regime's space project. The spacecraft is small by world standards - a microsatellite of a few hundred pounds. Launched in October by the Russians for a wealthy client, it orbits the earth once every 99 minutes and reportedly has a camera for peering down on large swaths of land.

But what makes this satellite particularly interesting is not its capabilities, which are rudimentary, but its owner: Iran. With last year's launching and another planned for the next few weeks, Tehran has become the newest member of the international space club.

The question now asked in Washington and other capitals is whether Iran's efforts are simply part of its drive to expand its technical prowess or an attempt to add another building block to its nuclear program. In that sense, it is the newest piece of the Iranian atomic puzzle.

To some government analysts and other experts in the West, Iran's space debut is potentially worrisome. While world attention has focused on whether Iran is clandestinely seeking nuclear arms, these analysts say the launchings mark a new stage in its growing efforts to master a range of sophisticated technologies, including rockets and satellites. The concern is that Tehran could one day turn such advances to atomic ends.

"It may appear tempting to dismiss Iranian efforts" as relatively crude, said John Sheldon, an analyst at the Center for Defense and International Security Studies in Britain who recently wrote a report on Tehran's space program. "But Iran has already demonstrated a persistence and patience that would indicate it is prepared to play a long game in order to achieve its ambitions."

Iran has publicly rejected the goal of developing unconventional arms. It says its space and rocket efforts are either entirely peaceful, aimed at improving the state's telecommunications and monitoring natural disasters - strong earthquakes shook Iran not long ago - or are military efforts meant to boost its defenses with conventional weapons.

But some Western analysts note that such technologies can also have atomic roles and that a crucial element of a credible nuclear arsenal is the ability to launch a missile accurately and guide a warhead to its target. While Iran now depends on Russia to launch its satellites into orbit, it has vowed to do so itself, and is developing a family of increasingly large rockets. In theory, the biggest could hurl not only satellites into space but warheads between continents.

"The real issue is that they have a very large booster under development," said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who wrote a recent report on Iran's nuclear effort.

He said Tehran's bid to develop new rocket and space technologies might be nothing more at this point than its exploring of technological options, at times quite modestly, as in its recent effort to loft experimental satellites.

"That doesn't mean the potential should be minimized," Cordesman said. "We know these states can achieve technical surprise."

Iran said on April 2 it had test-fired a fast underwater missile that could evade sonar, and it also announced that it had launched a new rocket that can carry multiple warheads and elude radar. The military actions, accompanied by film clips on state television during a week of naval manuevers, seemed calculated to defy growing pressure on Tehran.

So far, U.S. officials say they have not protested Iran's space program. Intelligence agencies reviewed information about the satellite launching last fall, but concluded that it warranted no action. Nor has the United States urged Russia - a key player in the current negotiations with Iran over its efforts to enrich uranium - to halt the launchings.

But a senior American official who spoke anonymously because he was unauthorized to address the topic publicly said the United States was "taking another look" at pressing Moscow to end the space assistance as a way of pressuring Iran to stop the enrichment of nuclear material.

Analysts across the political spectrum seem to agree that the Iranian missile and satellite programs bear watching, even if judged as presenting no current threat to the United States.

"It's clearly interesting to see what direction they're going," said David Wright, a space analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a policy research group in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The UN Security Council is now debating possible sanctions against Iran because many states worry that Tehran's atomic push conceals a clandestine effort to acquire an atom bomb. American intelligence agencies estimate that Iran is 5 to 10 years away from having enough material for a nuclear weapon.

John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, recently called the danger that Tehran "will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to integrate it with ballistic missiles Iran already possesses" a cause "for immediate concern." Iran has missiles that can reach about 1,000 miles, or 1,600 kilometers, which is as far away as Israel and, as Negroponte put it, has "the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East."

American intelligence officials estimate that it might field an intercontinental missile by 2015, but such forecasts are always rough approximations.

Scores of nations have satellites, including Algeria, Greece, Spain and Tonga. But only a dozen or so have rockets big and powerful enough to put satellites into orbit. In the Middle East, only Israel can now do so.

Tehran's effort to build a fleet of rockets, and to buy and make satellites, has received technical help from not only from Russia but China, India, Italy and North Korea.

Its effort began during the war between Iran and Iraq, from 1980 to 1988, when Baghdad fired many rockets and Tehran worked hard to respond in kind. A recent report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected arms analysis group in London, sketched the Islamic state's progress.

At first, Iran bought Russian Scud missiles and then learned how to make them on its own, calling them Shahab-1, Persian for shooting star. The missiles, 36 feet, or 10 meters, tall, can throw one- ton warheads roughly 200 miles. By 1991, Iran learned how to extend their range to about 300 miles, naming the new weapon Shahab-2.

Iran fired waves of these missiles in 1994, 1999 and 2001 at the armed camps of the National Liberation Army of Iran, a dissident force based in Iraq committed to overthrowing Tehran's regime.

During that period, Iran also sought to develop a new, more powerful family of missiles, dubbing them Shahab-3. Based on a North Korean model, they stand 56 feet tall.

In recent military parades, it has draped them with banners reading, "We will crush America" and "Wipe Israel off the map." Iran cloaks its advanced rocket work in as much secrecy as possible. However, Western analysts say many signs and declarations indicate that Tehran is working hard on missiles powerful enough to launch satellites into space or warheads between continents.

Charles Vick, an expert on the Iranian rocket program at GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria, Virginia, said one strategy was apparently to stack a Shahab-1 or Shahab-2 atop a Shahab-3, making a tall missile with two stages. It might have a range of nearly 2,000 miles. Other variants, Vick said, would go further.

Cordesman and Khalid Al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said in a recent report that advanced models, if perfected, would "enable Iran to target the U.S. Eastern Seaboard."

http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/apr/13/13042006re.htm

[candypreet]

good posts

[Ethyl]

Asiasat contracts Space Systems/Loral to build Asiasat 5

Indiantelevision.com Team


(6 May 2006 6:30 pm)


MUMBAI: Satellite operator Asiasat has signed a construction agreement with Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) to design and build Asiasat 5, a replacement satellite for Asiasat 2.

Asiasat 5 will launch in the second quarter of 2008. It will be built on a SS/L’s 1300 series satellite platform and will carry 26 C-band and 14 Ku-band transponders with an estimated operational life of 15 years.


Asiasat 5’s C-band footprint will offer a more powerful pan-Asian coverage than that of AsiaSat 2. Its Ku-band coverage will consist of three high power beams, two of which will cover East Asia and South Asia and an in-orbit steerable beam that can be positioned to provide service anywhere within Asiasat 5’s geographic coverage.




Asiasat 5 is designed to replace Asiasat 2 at the orbital location of 100.5 degrees East in advance of Asiasat 2’s scheduled retirement of 2010. Launching Asiasat 5 satellite two years earlier than required allows sufficient time to construct and launch a replacement satellite if necessary.


Asiasat CEO Peter Jackson says, “The SS/L 1300 series satellite is a space-proven platform and it offers the performance, reliability and cost effectiveness our customers require for AsiaSat 5. This satellite will allow Asiasat to expand our capacity and provide Asiasat with the capability of serving more diverse satellite services from this popular orbital slot of 100.5 degrees East.

"Planning this project well ahead of Asiasat 2’s retirement confirms our commitment to ensure continuity of service to our customers in the years ahead.”

http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k6/may/may66.htm

[Ethyl]

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32226

[Ethyl]

Kazakhstan launches first satellite into space

Kazakhstan sent its first satellite into space Sunday, a step toward fulfilling the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic's ambitions to join the elite club of space-exploring nations.

The Central Asian nation of 15 million is home to the world's largest space center, the Baikonur cosmodrome.

It has been leasing the Soviet-built facility to Russia, but now Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev wants his nation to build its own space industry.

The Kazakh government's ambition is fueled by its post-Soviet economic success, pumped up by oil-dollars.

Russian President Vladimir Putin joined Nazarbayev at Baikonur to watch the early morning launch of KazSat 1 -- a geostationary satellite designed to provide TV broadcast and communications for Kazakhstan, three other Central Asia nations -- Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan -- and part of Russia.

The two leaders watched the launch from an observation platform about 2 miles from the launch pad. After the rocket's fiery tail disappeared into the sky, which was just turning pink ahead of dawn, they left in a car without commenting.

The satellite, built by Russia's Khrunichev design center and reported to be worth $100 million, was launched aboard a Russian Proton-K carrier rocket. The launch was initially scheduled for December 2005 but was postponed due to technical problems.

"Everything went according to plan and it gives us hope that the work of the first Kazakh satellite will be successful as well," said Igor Panarin, a spokesman for the Russian space agency. "It is a victory for both Russia and Kazakhstan."

"It is a great step forward in the development of the domestic space industry and for Kazakhstan, it means it has become a space nation," Panarin added, noting that the nation had now joined the elite club of about 30 such countries.

Kazakhstan is planning space exploration missions and has reached an agreement with Russia to be part of all of Russia's projects involving Baikonur, said Serik Turzhanov, who heads the national space agency, Kazkosmos.

Set in the isolated western steppes of Kazakhstan, Baikonur was the scene of the historic launches of the first satellite to orbit the Earth and pioneer cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Today it's Russia's main launch site for manned space flights.

Nazarbayev has instructed his government to make development of the space industry a strategic goal and it is drafting a national space program up to 2020.

The ambitious plan includes projects to create Kazakhstan's own design bureau with assembly and testing facilities that would build small satellites weighing from 175-350 pounds.

There are plans to follow KazSat 1 with KazSat 2 and KazSat 3 and several scientific satellites that would be able to predict earthquakes and are equipped with remote sensing devices.

The plans also include developing a capacity to provide satellite launch services to other nations, according to Turzhanov.

Kazkosmos also intends to built a control center in the capital Astana that would monitor all launches from Baikonur and another center on the basis of the former Soviet Sary Shagan missile test site that would monitor satellites that fly over Kazakh territory.

The Kazakhs are also forming their own squad of cosmonauts, who have been training for a few years at the Russian cosmonaut training center.

Kazakhstan and Russia have also agreed to jointly develop a new launch complex for the more environmentally friendly Angara vehicle, an alternative to the Soyuz booster now in use, which uses poisonous fuel.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060618/kazakhstan_satellite_060618/20060618?hub=SciTech

[Ethyl]

Azerbaijan Launches NATO-Funded Project for Recycling Rocket Fuel

Authorities in Azerbaijan have inaugurated a NATO-funded project for reprocessing surplus rocket fuel dating back to Soviet times.

The project is being launched in Alyaty. It involves the conversion of about 1,500 metric tons of fuel known as melange into fertilizer. Warsaw Pact forces formerly used the fuel. It is considered hazardous to the environment.

The $2-million program will deal with fuel stored at two locations in Azerbaijan

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-07-04-voa52.cfm

[Ethyl]

(India) Rocket programme suffers double blow

GSLV plunges into the Bay of Bengal; repeat of Sunday’s Agni failure.

BANGALORE: India’s maiden attempt to launch a two-tonne communication satellite, INSAT-4C, from its own soil failed after the indigenous geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) plunged into the sea within a minute of takeoff.

Coming just a day after the Agni III ballistic missile failed its first test, the crash is a big blow to India’s rocket and missile engineers.

If it had succeeded, the GSLV’s fourth flight, and second operational one, would have launched India’s heaviest satellite.

Indian space engineers, who displayed bravado in firing the rocket from the country’s spaceport in Sriharikota after a one-hour delay due to a glitch, found the launch vehicle veering off and disintegrating over the Bay of Bengal.

“There has been a mishap in the first stage,” Indian Space Research Organisation chairman G Madhavan Nair said. “Things have gone wrong in the stage of separation. We have to analyse the data to know why it happened.”

After the first stage motors fire the rocket to the required distance and separate, subsequent stages are fired. But in this case, when the first stage was to separate from the 410 tonne rocket, it disintegrated. The mishap was almost a repeat of the Agni glitch.

The rocket, fired from the second launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Spaceport, was carrying INSAT-4C, a 2,168kg satellite, for direct-to-home telecast. Its third stage had a Russian cryogenic engine, which ISRO was hoping would be the last to be used, with an indigenous version being tested for the next GSLV.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1040870

[Ethyl]

China to launch first breeding satellite in September

BEIJING, July 22 (Xinhua) -- China will launch its first satellite for breeding plant seeds in September at the Jiuquan satellite launch center, said official sources on Saturday.

The satellite will make a 15-day space flight, said officials with the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

A conference was held Saturday to mark the accomplishment of the building of the breeding satellite, Shijian-8.

The satellite is expected to carry over 2,000 shares of plant seeds in nine categories and 180 groups, including seeds of grains, cash crops, and forage plants, as well as seeds of fungi and molecular biomaterials that have been sequenced.

The commission presides over the whole Shijian-8 project, while the Ministry of Agriculture is in charge of the breeding of plant seeds and the China Aerospace Science Group Company is responsible for designing and building the satellite, and studying the space environment for breeding.

China is now the third nation in the world capable of recovering satellites. So far, the country has launched 22 recoverable satellites with only one failure.

Since 1987, China has conducted breeding tests on nine return satellites and a number of new species of plant seeds have been bred in space by Chinese scientists. Enditem

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-07/22/content_4867409.htm

[Ethyl]

Satellites Catch Earth Reconfiguring Its Magnetic Field

Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have managed to perfectly position their 4 Cluster spacecraft so as to measure the Earth's magnetic field spontaneously reconfiguring itself. The process, called magnetic reconnection, is a transitional phase involving the interaction of plasma filled magnetic "bubbles," and is thought to be responsible for driving a variety of extremely powerful celestial phenomena. This is the first time that magnetic reconnection has been observed, and the data collected from the mission, appearing in Nature Physics, will be invaluable to astronomers and nuclear scientists.

Most of us have probably seen iron filings form a static arc around the poles of a bar magnet, but in space these fields are comprised of magnetic bubbles filled with electrified gas, otherwise known as plasma. Magnetic reconnection occurs when the bubbles are pushed together and their magnetic fields break and reconnect, creating a more stable magnetic relationship. Jets of particles that heat the plasma represent the inevitable energy release accompanying the reconnection process.
With this knowledge, scientists have calculated that a 3 dimensional zone must exist at the center of where the magnetic fields break and reconnect, a theoretical region known as the null point. Until now, scientists haven't been able to identify the null point, because at least 4 simultaneous coordinates of measurement are needed.

ESA scientists finally got their big break in September of 2001, when 4 Cluster craft - flying in tetrahedral formation - passed behind the Earth. The craft were flying 1000 kilometers apart from one another as they flew through the Earth's magnetotail (stretching out behind the nighttime side of our planet), and managed to surround a suspected null point. Data received from the Cluster craft was then analyzed by an international team of scientists led by Dr. C. Xiao, from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Pu from Peking University, and Professor Wang from Dalian University of Technology.

The team managed to identify and reconstruct the dimensions of the null point, but they were surprised by what they found. The data showed that the null point resides in a previously unheard of vortex structure measuring 500 kilometers across. "This characteristic size has never been reported before in observations, theory or simulations," say the researchers. The team added that further null point observations are required to determine whether the processes that they observed were anomalous or common to all magnetic reconnections.

The reconnection process is suspected of driving many powerful phenomena in our Solar System, such as radiation jets escaping from black holes, and tremendously powerful solar flares. Less dramatically, but no less awe-inspiring, magnetic reconnection on the dayside of the planet's magnetic field lets in solar gas, which produces a particular type of aurora called a "proton aurora."

And understanding the reconnection process would be a boon for scientists trying to control nuclear fusion, as spontaneous reconfigurations in Tokamak reactors make this process unpredictable. A greater understanding of reconnection could lead to better reactor designs that could prevent or minimize this unpredictability.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20060619213743data_trunc_sys.shtml

[Ethyl]

Seoul launches military communications satellite


AFP , SEOUL
Wednesday, Aug 23, 2006,Page 5
South Korea yesterday launched its first military communications satellite which will boost its ability to collect information on North Korea, officials said.

The Mugunghwa-5 satellite, built by French company Alcatel, lifted off from a ship in the South Pacific off Hawaii, telecom firm KT Corp and the defense ministry said.

The launch was led by Sea Launch, a joint venture established by US, Russian and European companies.

"We successfully made our first contact with the satellite one hour and 15 minutes after its launch," KT spokesman Hwang Dae-woon said.

The satellite to be placed in its orbit at 36,000km can cover telecommunications not only in the Korean Peninsula but also other Asian countries, including Japan and China, after four months of testing, he said.

The Mugunghwa-5 is the South's fourth communications satellite but the first for military purposes. Twelve of its 36 communications lines will be used exclusively by the military.

"The Mugunghwa-5 will greatly improve our information-gathering and communications ability," a defense ministry official said. The military currently relies heavily on land lines and terrestrial radio communications.

Along with the introduction of anti-missile equipment, South Korea will buy four advanced surveillance planes from US aircraft giant Boeing by 2012 to upgrade its early warning capability.

South Korea has no air surveillance system of its own and depends on US airborne reconnaissance aircraft based at Okinawa.

Seoul has launched three commercial satellites -- Mugunghwa 1, 2 and 3, since 1995. There is no Mugunghwa 4 because four is considered an unlucky number.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/08/23/2003324467

[Ethyl]

U.S.-made Malaysian satellite rides Russian rocket into space

Malaysia (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/malaysia.html)'s third satellite " Measat-3" rode a Russia (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/russia.html)n rocket smoothly on Tuesday into space from Baikonur, Kazakhstan (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/kazakhstan.html), Malaysia's national news services Bernama said.
The 220 million U.S. dollar commercial telecommunication satellite, built by Boeing Satellite Systems Inc in Los Angeles, was blasted off at 5:28 a.m. (2328 GMT Monday) by Russia's premier launcher "Proton rocket."
The satellite, owned by Malaysian East Asia Satellite System ( Measat) Sdn Bhd, will provide telecom services to customers in more than 100 countries from Asia, East Europe to Australia (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/australia.html), Africa.
Malaysia sent "Measat-1" and "Measat-2" into space in 1996. The first two satellites of the country each has a life span of 12 years. Malaysia is planning to launch two more satellites to relieve them in next two years.



http://english.people.com.cn/200612/13/eng20061213_331723.html

[Ethyl]

China to launch 22 more meteorological satellites by 2020

China will launch another 22 meteorological satellites by 2020 after successfully putting Fengyun-2D (FY-2D), its second geostationary orbit meteorological satellite, into orbit on Friday.
The 22 satellites include four more from the Fengyun-2 series, 12 from the Fengyun-3 series and six Fengyun-4 series, according to sources with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA).
Fengyun-2E, Fengyun-2F, Fengyun-2G and Fengyun-2H are scheduled to be launched in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014 respectively, said a CMA official.
The first two experimental models in the Fengyun-3 series, a new generation of polar-orbiting satellites, will be launched in 2007 and 2009. The other 10 will go into orbit from 2011 to 2018, the official said.
China will launch two experimental geostationary orbit Fengyun-4 models followed by four Fengyun-4 satellites from 2012 to 2019, he said.
The FY-2D is expected to provide accurate and timely information about weather changes for the Beijing (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/province/beijing.html) 2008 Olympic Games (http://www.beijing-olympic.org.cn/), especially the opening and closing ceremony and important contests.
The FY-2D, developed and manufactured by the Shanghai (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/province/Shanghai.html) Academy of Spaceflight Technology affiliated to China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., is capable of carrying out infrared nephanalysis of the form and structure of clouds and can also analyse data about visible daytime light.
It will form a twin-star observation system with Fengyun-2C, China's first professional geostationary orbit weather satellite which went into orbit on Oct. 19, 2004, according to CMA.
The two satellites have their own observation tasks, but can also replace each other if one of them malfunctions, the CMA said.



http://english.people.com.cn/200612/08/eng20061208_330199.html

[Ethyl]

Efforts to monitor Earth from satellites are at risk, panel says.

The ability of the United States to track retreating polar ice, shifting patterns of drought, winds and rainfall and other environmental changes is being put "at great risk" by faltering efforts to replace aging satellite-borne sensors, a panel convened by the country's leading scientific advisory group said.

By 2010, the number of operating Earth-observing instruments on NASA satellites, most of which are already past their planned lifetimes, will likely drop by 40 percent, the National Research Council warned in a report Monday.

The weakening of these monitoring efforts comes even as many scientists and the Bush administration have been stressing their growing importance, both to clarify risks from global warming and natural hazards and to track the condition of forests, fisheries, water and other resources on an increasingly crowded planet.

Several prominent scientists welcomed the report, saying that while the overall tightening of the federal budget played a role in threatening Earth-observing efforts, a significant contributor was also President George W. Bush's recent call for NASA to focus on manned space missions.
"NASA has a mission ordering that starts with the presidential goals — first of manned flight to Mars, and second establishing a permanent base on the moon and then third to examine Earth, which puts Earth rather far down on the totem pole," said F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Irvine, who shared a Nobel Prize for identifying threats to the ozone layer.

In an e-mailed statement, John Marburger 3rd, Bush's science adviser and director of the White House's science and technology policy office, acknowledged that there were many challenges to maintaining and improving Earth- observing systems, but he said that the administration was committed to keeping them a "top science priority." The report, "Earth Science and Applications From Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond," proposed spending roughly $7.5 billion on new instruments and satellite missions through 2020 that would satisfy various scientific and societal priorities while holding annual costs around what they were, as a percentage of the economy, in 2000.

"We're trying to present a balanced, affordable program that spans all the Earth sciences," said Richard Anthes, the co-chairman of the committee that wrote the report and the new president of the American Meteorological Society.
The report is the latest in a string of findings from such panels pointing to dangers from recent disinvestment in long-term monitoring of a fast-changing planet.

"This is the most critical time in human history, with the population never before so big and with stresses growing on the Earth," Anthes said. "We just want to get back to the United States being a leader instead of someone you can't count on."
Satellite-borne instruments, using radars, lasers and other means, have revolutionized Earth and climate science, allowing researchers to accurately and efficiently track things like sea level and the average temperature of various layers of the atmosphere.

One of the most important aspects of such monitoring is having new satellites built and launched before old ones fail.
Without overlapping streams of data, it is difficult to assemble meaningful long-term records that are sufficiently precise to reveal some new and potentially dangerous trend amid the naturally variable conditions in oceans and the atmosphere, the report's authors said.

The report went beyond discussing ailing hardware and said that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy should do more to ensure that society and science were benefiting fully from the reams of data flowing from orbiting instruments.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/16/news/environ.php

[Ethyl]

Russian Booster Puts Batch of Small Satellites Into Orbit

A Dnepr rocket laden with 14 small international satellites flew out of an underground missile silo and soared into space Tuesday on its first mission since failure struck the launcher last year.

The three-stage rocket lifted off at 0646 GMT (2:46 a.m. EDT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (http://www.space.com/ap_baikonur_anniv_050602.html) in Kazakhstan. The 111-foot-tall booster worked as planned and its cache of payloads were successfully deployed from the rocket's third stage a few minutes later.

The Dnepr rocket, a retired missile from Russia's strategic military forces, was targeting a nearly circular Sun-synchronous orbit between 400 miles and 500 miles high.

The flight marked the Dnepr's resumption of launches after the rocket fell short of orbit (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060801_dnepr_investigation.html) and crashed in the Kazakh desert during its last mission in July. Investigators traced the cause of the failure to a glitch in the rocket's first stage control system.

Kosmotras, a joint company formed by the Russian and Ukrainian governments, markets the Dnepr booster. Kosmotras officials postponed Tuesday's launch from late March to replace a faulty cable in the rocket's third stage telemetry system, according to the company's Web site.

Half of the 14 satellites put in space Tuesday were orbited for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while seven others were tiny palm-sized craft in the CubeSat program (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/cube_sats_040908.html).

Three P-POD deployment systems built by students and professors at California Polytechnic State University housed seven miniature CubeSat payloads during launch. The CubeSats were to be ejected from the P-POD devices a few moments after arriving in orbit, according to project officials.

The CubeSat program – developed and run by officials at Cal Poly and Stanford University – offers universities and low-budget satellite programs an affordable way to put payloads in space.

The largest CubeSat launched Tuesday was the Multi-Application Survivable Tether (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/tether_tech_030618-2.html) experiment, which is designed to test the durability of space tethers for Tethers Unlimited, a Seattle-based company investigating concepts for tether propulsion in space.

MAST consists of three small satellites unfurled along a thin tether stretching about one kilometer long. The tether, composed of three braided lines about two one-hundredths of an inch thick, will be deployed by springs about a week after launch.

"We have developed a design for a tether structure that we believe will enable space tether systems to survive in the space environment for long durations, and we hope that the data that MAST collects will prove that it works," said Robert Hoyt, Tethers Unlimited chief executive officer.

The middle satellite on the tether will slowly crawl along the length of the tether to look for signs of damage to the structure. Called Gadget, the tiny craft will begin operating about a week after the tether is unfolded.

Observers on the ground should be able to spot MAST as it flies overhead shortly before sunrise and after sunset. The craft will be seen as a small line about one-seventh the diameter of the Moon as viewed from Earth, according to Hoyt.

Developed for less than $1 million using a combination of NASA contract money and private funding, MAST is the company's first satellite. But officials hope additional craft can be launched in the future to further test tether concepts.

Two other projects are under development by Tethers Unlimited engineers to take the next step in demonstrating space tethers. One would use a tether to propel a 22-pound satellite past the Moon, but funding for the missions is uncertain, Hoyt said in an interview.

Tethers provide an alternative for space propulsion using momentum to send spacecraft into higher orbits. Space tethers can also produce electricity as they interact with Earth's magnetic field, according to Tethers Unlimited.

The Dnepr rocket also launched a nanosatellite testbed built by Boeing. The craft contains four diminutive microcontrollers, each of which can process more than 300 million instructions per second. The spacecraft will demonstrate systems to be used by Boeing in future satellites.

Other CubeSat payloads included CAPE 1 for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Libertad 1 for Universidad Sergio Arboleda in Colombia. The Aerospace Corporation also launched their first two-pound CubeSat spacecraft and Cal Poly will operate two development satellites hauled to space aboard the rocket.

Seven remote sensing and communications satellites were loaded on the Dnepr launcher for Tuesday's mission.

The Ukrainian Yuzhnoye design bureau built the 220-pound EgyptSat spacecraft under a contract with Egypt's National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, a government agency tasked with gathering and studying satellite imagery of the Earth.

Yuzhnoye engineers designed and manufactured EgyptSat 1, and Ukrainian trainers are helping Egyptian officials create satellite control facilities and upgrade ground stations, according to the National Space Agency of Ukraine.

The craft is fitted with cameras to take pictures of Earth, but Egypt is not providing details on the resolution and clarity of EgyptSat 1's imagery. The government agency operating the spacecraft specializes in monitoring natural resources, environmental changes, and large-scale disasters, according to its Web site.

SaudiSat 3, another small Earth observation craft, was also sent to orbit aboard the Dnepr rocket. The satellite was launched for Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology.

The Saudi government agency will also manage five 26-pound SaudiComsat communications satellites launched Tuesday.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/070417_dnepr_launch.html

[Ethyl]

China says "Compass" navigation satellite put into use

China has put a new "Compass" navigation satellite into use after technicians completed the third position fixing on Monday, according to China's satellite control center. The satellite, launched on early Saturday, is part of the country's ambitious "Compass" navigational system, which is expected to provide services to customers all over China and neighboring countries by 2008.

The Xi'an Satellite Control Center reported that it adjusted the satellite's position via remote control system for the last time on Monday, sending the satellite into the exact orbit.
It said the onboard equipments are functioning well.
The "Compass" navigational system is mainly designed for the country's economic development, providing navigation and positioning services in transportation, meteorology, petroleum prospecting, forest fire monitoring, disaster forecast, telecommunications and public security, among others.
The system includes at least 35 satellites, namely five geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) and 30 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites, according to previous reports.
On February 3, China successfully put a test "Compass" satellite into orbit, the fourth of such experimental satellites launched since 2000.
Experts said the "Compass" navigation experimental system is operating well and has played a significant role in providing all-weather and all-day navigation and positioning information.
China is one of a few countries in the world that are capable of developing navigation satellite system on its own. Previous reports said the "Compass" system will provide clients with positioning accuracy within 10 meters, velocity accuracy with 0.2 meter per second and timing accuracy within 50 nanoseconds. SOURCE: Government of China

http://www.huliq.com/18706/china-says-compass-navigation-satellite-put-into-use

[Ethyl]

China launches Nigerian communications satellite


China launched a domestically produced communications satellite for Nigeria yesterday, marking an expansion of China's commercial launching services for foreign space hardware, Xinhua news agency reported.
The launch coincides with the opening of the African Development Bank's annual board meeting in Shanghai this week, reflecting growing African-Chinese ties.
The Long March 3-B rocket carrying the Nigerian Communication Satellite, blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province just after midnight, Xinhua said.
The satellite had entered its orbit "accurately" and would offer telecommunications, broadcasting and broadband multimedia services for Africa throughout the next 15 years, it said.
China was awarded the US$311 million deal in 2004 after it outbid 21 international rivals, the first time a foreign buyer had purchased both a Chinese-made satellite and its launching service, Xinhua said. Yesterday's launch represented "China's wish to cooperate with developing countries in the peaceful use of outer space and to promote a closer relationship between China and African countries," the agency said.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2007/05/15/2003360893

[Ethyl]

Russian rocket sends SES telecommunications satellite into space

MOSCOW, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Russia launched Wednesday a Proton-Mcarrier rocket to send an Astra 1M satellite into orbit, news agencies reported.

The carrier was launched at 11:44 p.m. Moscow time (2044 GMT) from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, Alexander Bobrenev, press secretary of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
According to the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos), the satellite will separate from the upper stage about 9 hours after the launch, and then reach its orbital position at 19.2 degrees East longitude.
The Luxemburg-based SES is a global provider of satellite telecommunications services that operates mainly through SES ASTRA in Europe, SES AMERICOM in North America and SES NEW SKIES in Africa, South America, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. The new satellite will expand the SES satellite group, which currently consists of 36 satellites. The ASTRA satellite fleet delivers high quality broadcasting to over 117 million European households.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/06/content_10313741.htm

[Ethyl]

U.S., Russian satellites collide in space

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A privately owned U.S. communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite in the first such mishap in space, a U.S. military spokesman said on Wednesday.
The crash, which took place on Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved a spacecraft of Iridium Satellite LLC and a Russian communications satellite, said Air Force Colonel Les Kodlick of the U.S. Strategic Command.
"We believe it's the first time that two satellites have collided in orbit," he said, adding the debris was potentially a problem for space operations.
The command's Joint Space Operations Center was tracking 500 to 600 new bits of debris, some as small as 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) across, in addition to the 18,000 or so other man-made objects it has catalogued in space, Kodlick said.
The collision occurred at roughly 780 kilometers (485 miles), an altitude used by satellites that monitor weather and carry telephone communications among other things, he said.
"It's a very important orbit for a lot of satellites," he said.
The International Space Station flies at a lower altitude and is the command's top priority in attempting to prevent collisions.
CONSTELLATION STILL OPERATING
Bethesda, Maryland-based Iridium operates the world's largest commercial satellite constellation made up of some 66 satellites plus orbiting spares.
Its constellation remained healthy, but some customers may experience brief, occasional outages pending a temporary fix expected to be in place by Friday, the company said.
"This event is not the result of a failure on the part of Iridium or its technology," said Liz DeCastro, a company spokeswoman.
Iridium said it planned to move one of its in-orbit spare satellites into the constellation to replace the lost craft within 30 days.
Among the 18,000-plus objects being tracked in space by the U.S. Strategic Command are operational and defunct satellites, spent rocket boosters and debris that is 3.9 inches in diameter or larger.
Nicholas Johnson, an orbital expert at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said it was uncertain how much new debris had been created by the crash.
"It takes a while for the debris to spread out and for us to get an accurate head count," he said. NASA contracts with the Department of Defense for orbital tracking services and regularly maneuvers its spacecraft to avoid any crashes.
DeCastro said the company, which has a contract with Boeing Co to maintain and operate its satellites, received information about the crash from the U.S. government.
One of the spacecraft was about the size of a Chinese satellite that Beijing deliberately knocked out in a weapons test two years ago, Johnson said.
That explosion generated about 2,500 pieces of potentially hazardous debris near the orbit where the crash took place.
There was no indication that the collision was intentional on the part of anyone, said a U.S. government source who asked not to be named.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE51A8IA20090212

[Ethyl]

Russia signs deal to launch Angola satellite

LUANDA, June 26 (Reuters) - Russia and Angola signed a series of agreements on Friday in areas ranging from aviation, to mining and the telecommunications sectors, which are expected to bolster ties between the former Cold War allies.
In one of the six agreements, signed between ministers of both governments in Luanda, Russia said it would help place in orbit Angola's first satellite, branded Angosat, to improve the southwestern African nation's telecommunications system.
Angola marks the final stop of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's four-country trip to Africa, the first visit to the continent as Russian leader. Russia faces tough competition from the United States and China for resources in Africa.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Cuba backed Angola's ruling MPLA party while the United States and apartheid-South Africa supported rebels from UNITA.
Thousands of Soviet military advisers arrived in Angola during the early years of the country's 1975-2002 civil war and Angola's top military brass, including now President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, were trained in the Soviet Union.
But when the Cold War ended, links between the two nations weakened. The MPLA dropped its Marxist ideologies and turned to capitalism as the country's oil production soared.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8578902

[Ethyl]

Russia sends U.S. communications satellite into orbit

MOSCOW, June 30 (Xinhua) -- Russia launched a carrier rocket on Tuesday to send a U.S. communications satellite into space, news agencies reported, citing the Khrunichev state space research and production center.
Alexander Borbrenyov, press secretary of the Khrunichev center, said a Russian Proton-M carrier rocket, with a Sirius FM5 atop, blasted off at around 23:10 Moscow time (1910 GMT) from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.
Earlier, an official from the Russian Federal space agency (Roscosmos) said the satellite is expected to separate from the booster 9 hours later.
"The satellite will take up a point in a geostationary orbit at 96 degrees, western longitude," the Itar-tass news agency cited the unnamed official as saying.
The launch, originally scheduled for Monday, was postponed one day due to some glitches when the Briz-M booster was fueled last Wednesday.
The Sirius FM5 satellite, manufactured by the U.S. Space Systems/Loral Company and owned by U.S. broadcasting magnate Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. Company, will function in orbit for 15years.
The satellite, whose liftoff weight is 5,840 kg, has a power twice as that of any existing satellites. It will provide music, sports and other broadcasts for regions including the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean Sea area. The launch of the Sirius FM5 satellite is the fifth involving a Proton-M carrier rocket this year. A product of the Khrunichev center, the three-stage carrier rocket using liquid propellant has a liftoff weight of about 700 tons.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/01/content_11630153.htm

[Ethyl]

U.S. Climate Satellite Capabilities in Jeopardy


The United States is in danger of losing its ability to monitor key climate variables from satellites, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The country’s Earth-observing satellite program has been underfunded for a decade, and the impact of the lack of funds is finally hitting home. The GAO report (http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-456) found that capabilities originally slated for two new Earth-monitoring programs, NPOESS and GOES-R, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Defense have been cut and adequate plans to replace them do not exist.
Meanwhile, up until six months ago, NASA had 15 functional Earth-sensing satellites. Two of them went down in the past year, and of the remaining 13, 12 are past their design lifetimes. Only seven may be functional by 2016, said Waleed Abdalati, a longtime NASA satellite scientist now teaching at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Taken together, American scientists will soon find themselves without the ability to monitor changes to key Earth systems at a time when such measurements could help determine the paths of the world’s energy and transportation systems.
“Can you imagine if we’ve passed the apex of our Earth-observing capability right at a time when we realize that, ‘Hey, we need to understand what’s going on’?” said Abdalati. “We’re talking about less than half the capability in the coming five years than we’ve had in the previous five years.”
While President Obama’s 2011 budget (http://www.spacenews.com/civil/091231-nasa-budget-earth-science-lags-behind.html) has gone partway to restoring money for Earth observations, a decade of neglect has left the nation’s agencies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the US Geological Survey — without the resources they need to do the job.
Despite this, the agencies put together a consortium to come up with a coordinated strategy for Earth observations, the United States Group on Earth Observations (http://usgeo.gov/). The group readied a report on the state of the nation’s Earth-observation capabilities, but it’s been stuck in review for the past year.
The GAO’s very first recommendation is that this report be released to the public.
“We’ve been told that it proposes continuing observations in 15 to 20 areas. We’ve been told that it doesn’t involve costs and schedules,” said GAO auditor David Powner, lead author of the GAO report. “We think that what’s really important is that we need to get these initial findings and reports. Everyone is telling us that there are good things to build off of in there.”
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/06/terra_modis_kamchatka_clouds-e1275668798853.jpg (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/us-climate-sats/terra_modis_kamchatka_clouds/)The National Academy of Sciences also created a survey of satellite capability (http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820&page=3), which highlighted 15 important missions. The group of scientists called for increasing NASA’s $1.4 billion Earth-science budget by $500 million. Without that cash infusion, American Earth-observation capabilities will decline.
“The extraordinary U.S. foundation of global observations is at great risk,” the report concludes. “Between 2006 and the end of the decade, the number of operating missions will decrease dramatically, and the number of operating sensors and instruments on NASA spacecraft, most of which are well past their nominal lifetimes, will decrease by some 40 percent.”
Obama’s current budget plans have the NASA Earth-science budget reaching $1.65 billion by 2014, but the damage to the base of the country’s capabilities during the Bush years continue to hurt current operations.
“It’s no secret that Earth science did suffer at NASA and perhaps at NOAA under the Bush administration,” Abdalati said. “Now, there are certainly efforts to reclaim that capability.”
But American scientists are now playing from behind trying to replace or patch up the infrastructure that lets us understand what’s going on with our planet. There are structural problems, too. Climate observation missions have very particular requirements, said climate scientist Inez Fung of the University of California at Berkeley.
“If you want to do climate change, you need a uniform set of data so that you can compare changes through time,” Fung said. “It’s a really tough problem.”
That means researchers need continuity in the data they receive from satellites, which requires long-term planning and long-term planning requires consistent funding.
“Long-term planning for the federal government is really difficult,” Powner said. “There are some good folks within NOAA, NASA and DOD who are very concerned about the long-term outlook. But it’s tough to compete, especially when there is a downturn and smaller budgets. It’s always that near-term focus.”
And so the United States may lose its ability to understand what’s happening on and to the planet.
“The agencies will not be able to provide key environmental data that are important for sustaining climate and space weather measurements,” the GAO report concludes.
For Abdalati, the ability to observe Earth from space is fundamental to U.S. interests.
“If we just step back as a society and ask, ‘How important is it that we understand how and why our Earth is changing?’ Regardless of where you fall on man-made influences to climate change, we can all agree that there is a need to figure out what’s going on and what’s coming.”


Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/us-climate-sats/#ixzz0pwHom4n9

[Ethyl]

Russian Proton Rocket Launches Arab Satellite

MOSCOW, June 4 (Bernama) -- A Russian Proton M rocket blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan early on Friday ferrying to orbit a European-made telecommunications satellite for the ARABSAT satellite communications operator, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

The Arabsat-5B (Badr 5) satellite will be beaming down to the Middle East and North Africa for the next 15 years.

The Badr 5 satellite with the flight mass of 5.4 tonnes, made by the European aerospace concern EADS, will provide satellite digital television broadcasting and telephone communication services to customers in the Middle East and North Africa countries.

"The Proton-M carrier rocket with the Briz-M upper stage and the communications satellite was blasted off from Baikonur at 02:00, Moscow time," the central information point of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) specified.

According to Roskosmos: "The Proton engines worked for 581 seconds after which the orbital unit comprising the satellite and upper stage entered the suborbital trajectory ensuring the support orbit inclination of 51.5 degrees."

"After that with five engine firings of the upper stage the satellite will be placed on the target orbit," Roskosmos explained.

Roskosmos also said that the Arabsat-5B has successfully detached from the Proton-M launch vehicle and continues flight on the suborbital trajectory.

The Arab Satellite Communications Organisation (often abbreviated as Arabsat), established in 1976 by the member states of the Arab League, is a leading communications satellite operator in the Arab World, headquartered in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Arabsat owns and operates five satellites platforms at orbital positions 26 degrees and 30.5 degrees East.

-- BERNAMA

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=503542

[Ethyl]

Japanese spy satellite over DPRK out of commission


A Japanese spy satellite that can monitor the situation in the DPRK at any time of day, as well as through thick clouds, has suddenly gone out of order. This is reported by Tokyo media which is quoting government sources. According to the Center for Satellite Intelligence for the Government, the radar system of the satellite, launched into orbit in February 2007, went down earlier this week and causing the satellite to go completely out of order.

Specialists are trying to restore the radar system by remote control, but they recognized that the chances of success are small. The satellite’s radar was to have worked in space for five years and it was to complete its mission in 2012.

Journalists have noted that the breakdown has occurred at the most inopportune time as the DPRK continues to develop missile and nuclear programs and as China expands its military capabilities. Currently, the situation on the Korean peninsula is being monitored by three Japanese spy-satellites, one of which has practically exhausted all its resources. All of them are reportedly only equipped with optical devices, ITAR-TASS reports.
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/08/29/17709909.html