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GIOVE-B is cleared for fueling in preparation for Starsem’s April 27 launch
April 7, 2008
Europe's second navigation satellite has been authorized for fueling at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, preparing the spacecraft for its April 27 liftoff aboard a Soyuz launcher.
GIOVE-B is now in Starsem's Hazardous Processing Facility, where the 530 kg. spacecraft was transferred after completing its checkout at the company’s Payload Processing Facility. Both of these state-of-the-art clean room centers are located inside Baikonur Cosmodrome’s Site 112 building.
The GIOVE-B satellite was built by an industrial consortium headed by Astrium GmbH (Germany) as satellite prime, and Thales Alenia Space (Italy) as subcontractor for assembly, integration and test. It carries a high-precision passive maser clock, and will be able to transmit MBOC (multiplexed binary offset carrier) signals in accordance with a recent compliance agreement for European/U.S. space-based navigation systems.
GIOVE-B’s upcoming launch is Starsem’s second mission at the service of Europe's Galileo program, and follows the launch of GIOVE-A in December 2005.
See the other Feature stories on Starsem's GIOVE-B launch:
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