Four Harris-built maritime vessel tracking receivers have begun to track nearly 250,000 ships around the world as part of hosted payloads onboard Iridium‘s NEXT satellites that were launched in January. Harris said Monday the receivers are designed to offer global automatic identification system information and ship tracking capacity for government and commercial users. Iridium’s NEXT satellite constellation is scheduled to reach full […] More

Space Exploration Technologies has delayed a Falcon 9 rocket launch previously  slated to take off Monday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California due to high winds and rain at the site, CNN reported Sunday. Jill Disis and Danielle Wiener-Bronner write that SpaceX now expects to launch its rocket with an initial set of 10 NEXT satellites for Iridium on Jan. […] More

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory looks to receive a National Science Foundation grant to continue its observation missions using an Iridium satellite constellation, SpaceNews reported Monday. Dan Leone writes Johns Hopkins APL is eyeing the 66-satellite Next constellation Iridium plans to launch between 2015 and 2017 under the second phase of APL’s Active Magnetosphere […] More