What's in this week's issue of Space News? Every Monday we post quick, concise summaries of the current issue's top stories.

The most recent smaller stories from all corners of the space community, collected in one convenient place.

PARIS — Satellite operator Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) of Hong Kong, which in June announced a joint agreement with SingTel Optus for the purchase of the new ABS-2 satellite, announced July 2 it was purchasing the aging Koreasat-2 satellite from South Korea's KT Corp. and moving it to ABS slot at 75 degrees east.

PARIS — Europe's Ariane 5 ECA rocket on July 1 successfully placed the TerreStar-1 mobile communications satellite — the largest commercial spacecraft ever built — into geostationary transfer orbit from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.

PARIS — Europe's Eumetsat meteorological satellite organization on July 1 tentatively approved a $90 million contribution to the Jason-3 ocean-altimetry satellite to be built with the United States and France, suggesting that a long intra-European dispute about the program was nearing a resolution.

PARIS — An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton rocket on July 1 successfully placed Sirius XM Satellite Radio's Sirius FM-5 direct-broadcast radio satellite into geostationary transfer orbit, a satellite New York-based Sirius said will add backup capacity to the three existing Sirius satellites.

PARIS — Mobile satellite services provider Globalstar Inc. has closed a life-saving financial package featuring key backing by France's export-credit agency, Coface, a deal whose $738 million in total value will permit Globalstar to build and launch 24 second-generation satellites by the end of 2010, the company's top official said.

PARIS — Earth imagery supplier DigitalGlobe has won an eight-month extension of its contract with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) under which NGA will continue purchasing WorldView-1 satellite data through March 31, 2010, DigitalGlobe announced June 29. The contract terms call for NGA to pay DigitalGlobe $12.5 million per month — the same rate as under the previous contract — or $100 million over the full eight-month extension period, the company said.

PARIS — Boeing Co. said June 25 that it expects to take a pretax charge of $35 million to its second-quarter earnings as a result of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Sea Launch Co., a commercial launch services provider in which Boeing is a 40 percent shareholder. Boeing said that, if Sea Launch's other shareholders do not make good on their obligations, Boeing could face additional pretax charges of up to $478 million.

PARIS — Sea Launch Chief Executive Kjell Karlsen said his launch services company resorted to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing only at the last minute, after concluding that it could not reach an agreement with a former customer, Hughes Communications, on a stretched-out payment of a $52.3 million arbitration award Hughes won against Sea Launch.

PARIS — Commercial launch services provider Sea Launch Co. LLC on June 22 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and told a bankruptcy court that Sea Launch creditors are claiming more than $2 billion in unpaid debt. Nearly half of it — $977.5 million — is claimed by Sea Launch's general contractor, Boeing.

PARIS — The Measat-3a telecommunications satellite was successfully placed into geostationary transfer orbit June 22 by a version of the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit-3SL rocket operated from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Measat and launch-services operator Sea Launch Co. said.