ICON

Col. Richard Kniseley will deliver the keynote address at the SpaceNews 2023 Icon Awards on 2023-12-05 in Washington.

U.S. Space Force Colonel Richard Kniseley, head of Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO), will deliver the keynote address at the SpaceNews 2023 Icon Awards on 2023-12-05 in Washington, D.C.

The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) spacecraft has not communicated with ground stations since 2022-11-25.

ICON was launched in October 2019.

NASA projected spending $6,700,000 on ICON operations in fiscal year 2023.

ICON completed its two-year primary mission in late 2021 and was operating in an interim extended mission.

Hiber received AWS’ Commercial Start-Up Launch of the Year award in 2018 and was recognized as a Dutch National Icon in 2019.

The Falcon 9 contract for IXPE was valued at $50.2 million, compared with the $56,400,000 value of the 2014 contract NASA awarded for the ICON launch on a Pegasus XL.

NASA targeted an 2019-10-10 launch of the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 contract for the IXPE launch was valued at $50.8 million, which was less than the $56,400,000 cost for the Pegasus launch of ICON.

ICON was originally scheduled to launch in late 2017 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.

Engineers detected off-nominal data from the Pegasus rocket after the L-1011 aircraft took off for the 2018-11-07 ICON launch attempt, and the launch was scrubbed.

The ICON launch was delayed to June 2018 because of an issue with the Pegasus rocket’s separation system.

The ICON launch was rescheduled for 2018-11-07 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA’s 2014 contract for Pegasus to launch the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) spacecraft was valued at $56.3 million, including payload processing and other services.