The Autumnal equinox is almost here and solar outages will occur from September 2 to 13.
Easterly satellites such as Inteslat 8 will be affected around 9.00 AEST for periods of up to 15 minutes.
Westerly satellites such as Thaicom 5 will be affected at around 3pm AEST.
To calculate the precise outage time for your location, go the the ionispheric prediction service  on line calculator at:
http://www.ips.gov.au/Satellite/3/1
Satellite systems using auto trackers should have the tracker disabled during periods of solar outage to ensure the dish does not lock to the Sun !!

Optus has announced that due to a court suppression order issued by the Supreme Court of Australia regarding broadcaster coverage of impending proceedings of a particular court case in Victoria, the ABC and any other media organization with national satellite programming coverage, has been forced to restrict the availability of their national service to viewers. What this means, for the duration of the suppression order, is that Aurora viewers will only be able to watch the ABC service applicable to the state in which they reside.

Arianespace has successfully launched
JCSAT-12 for Japan’s Sky Perfect JSAT and Optus D3 destined to be co located with Optus C1 at 156 East.
The launch was made using the Ariane 5 launcher from French Guinea with a one hour launch window starting at 22:09GMT, (08:09 AEST). A replay of the succesful launch is viewable on the web at http://www.videocorner.tv/.
The Optus D3 satellite will allow a quite significant capacity increase for customers locatedin Australia and New Zealand with Pay TV provider Foxtel already announcing 20 additional services to be added to their platform by the end of …

Malaysias’s blasted off into space at 11.35 am Malaysian time on July 15 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands. Launch was delayed for four hours due to a malfunction in the equipment used to load helium into the launcher.
Twenty minutes into launch, the 180kg satellite entered orbit at 685Km above earth, to become the world’s first remote sensing satellite launched into Near Equatorial Orbit (NEqO).
The launch at Omelek Island using Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)’s launcher Falcon 1 went smoothly after the four hour delay. RazakSAT carries a …

A technical problem aboard China’s Sinosat 3 satellite is believed to have caused the outage which occurred on July 14 when all broadcasts from the satellite were cut for 12 hours. During the outage, programs were routed via Chinasat 6b, according to Chinese news website CRIenglish.com.
An official from the China Direct Broadcast Satellite Co Ltd was quoted as saying: ” the glitch wont affect future use of the satellite or cut short its length of service”. The official explained; “ the failure was totally unexpected and doesn’t mean that China …

All those lunar landing skeptics who believe footage from the Moon was shot in a Hollywood studio will have to rethink their theories, as recent photographs taken by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, clearly show equipment and footprints left by astronauts on Apollo 11 and 14 missions. All five Apollo landing sites will be photographed by the Orbiter, which was launched on June 18 this year and will spend at least the next 12 months mapping the Moon.
Photo: NASA

Asiasat 5 has arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome accompanied by a team from Space Systems Loral. The satellite, built by SSL is based on their well known Star 1300 bus, and will be launched on a Proton Breeze M rocket mid August.  The Proton launch vehicle, utilizing a 4-burn Breeze M will lift off from Pad 39 sometime mid August .  The first three stages of the Proton will use a standard ascent profile to place the Orbital Unit (Breeze M upper stage and AsiaSat 5) into a sub-orbital trajectory.  …

Arianespace will launch two new satellites into orbit on the 21st of August, the launcher will carry JCSAT-12 for Japan’s Sky Perfect JSAT and Optus D3 destined to be co located with Optus C1 at 156 East.

The launch will be made using the Ariane 5 launcher from French Guinea with a one hourlaunch window starting at 22:09GMT, (08:09 AEST). The launch will be viewable on the web at http://www.videocorner.tv/.
The Optus D3 satellite will allow a quite significant capacity increase for customers locatedin Australia and New Zealand with Pay TV provider Foxtel …

C Band transponders reaching the Australian East coast have seen a power reduction over the past few days. Viewers were previously able to receive C Band signals on 3412MHz on dishes as small as 1.6m are now having significant trouble receiving this transponder especially in areas affected by 3.5GHz WiMax interference. Measurments made this morning on an Acesat2.4m solid antenna using a Zinwell LNBF reported a transponder strength ranging from 9 – 10dB. Whilst this signal level would usually be enough to safisfy any satellite receive, combining this with WiMax …

Hot on the heels of GeoEye 1 (see PSN Sept. & Oct 08) comes Worldview 2, promoted as the worlds technologically advanced, highest resolution space imaging satellite, capable of 8 band multispectral imaging. The satellite, which will become part of an existing constellation of 2 satellites will are already operated by Digital Globe Inc., a US imaging company based in Colorado.
The satellite will be capable of collecting 975,000 square kilometers of imagery each day, and by adopting a Sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 770 kilometers, will have an …