Matra Marconi Space has been awarded a $2.5 million contract from the European Space Agency to develop the Minus Eighty-degree Laboratory Freezer (MELFI) for the International Space Station (ISS). Three flight models will be built for NASA and one for Japan. The MELFI, which will become the first European payload to be flown to the ISS aboard the US laboratory model in 1999, will provide low-temperature storage for experiment samples.
Source: Flight International
China’s AVIC has secured a contract from the China Manned Space Agency to develop a winged, reusable spacecraft called Haolong.
The UK Space Command’s first owned earth observation microsatellite has been launched, providing the inaugural element of a planned space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) constellation.
Orbital launch pioneer SpaceX is being contracted by the American space agency NASA to develop a so-called “US Deorbit Vehicle” that can safely return the International Space Station to Earth via controlled re-entry.
