NASA planned an assessment of cost and schedule progress for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at the end of 2020 ahead of the mission’s critical design review in 2021.
NASA’s fiscal year 2021 budget request sought to cancel the PACE mission and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
NASA renamed the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on 2020-05-20.
Nancy Grace Roman oversaw the development of the Orbital Astronomical Observatories launched from 1966 through 1972.
Nancy Grace Roman joined NASA in 1959 as the agency’s first chief of astronomy and worked at NASA for 20 years.
Intelsat skipped a $125,000,000 interest payment in April 2020, triggering a 30-day grace period before default.
The skipped $125,000,000 interest payment triggered a 30-day grace period for Intelsat to complete the payment before defaulting.
Grace Koh is the ambassador leading the U.S. delegation at WRC-19 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Iridium launched five Iridium Next satellites with the twin GRACE-FO satellites in May 2018, including two re-manifested satellites originally assigned to a Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr mission and three additional Iridium Next satellites.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 on 2018-05-22 from Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying five Iridium Next satellites and two GRACE-FO Earth science satellites using a previously-flown first stage.
The GRACE-FO mission was originally planned to launch on a Dnepr rocket in 2017.
The German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) contributed about $91,000,000 to the GRACE-FO mission.
The original GRACE mission was a U.S.-German partnership that operated from 2002 until late last year.
Sensors on the GRACE-FO spacecraft will collect GPS radio occultation data for atmospheric sounding similar to data provided by the U.S.-Taiwan COSMIC constellation and commercial satellites operated by Spire.
On the 2018-05-21 launch, the Falcon 9 upper stage will deploy the two GRACE-FO satellites into one orbit and then relight to maneuver to a different orbit for Iridium satellite deployment.
The 2018-05-21 mission will carry five Iridium Next satellites and will be a rideshare with GRACE-FO, an Earth science mission developed by NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences.
Iridium’s rideshare mission with the GRACE Follow-On satellites will use a flight-proven Falcon 9 first stage, representing Iridium’s third mission to use a pre-flown Falcon 9 first stage.