SOLNA, Sweden, 2 May 2009. The Swedish Space Corp. (SSC), a global provider of mission critical systems and services to the aerospace industry, has received all necessary approvals from the U.S. government and has completed the acquisition of U.S.-based Universal Space Network (USN), a provider of space operations for telemetry, tracking, and control services. USN will operate as a U.S. corporation and subsidiary of SSC with no change to its operation or organization.

With the completion of this acquisition, SSC and USN will jointly provide a larger set of global services to their customers, while continuing to provide a high level of support to each customer locally. PrioraNet, the trademarked name of their global satellite tracking service, is now positioned to better support civil, commercial, and government missions worldwide, says a company official.

"The acquisition of USN is an important step to provide satellite owners and operators with a world-class, one-stop-shop for satellite operations and management service. This further complements SSC's recent acquisition of the Santiago Chile ground station completed less than a year ago. As other products and services are added, the expanding SSC group will be better positioned to help our customers exceed their global growth and profitability objectives," says Lars Persson, president and CEO of Swedish Space Corp.

"The objective of this acquisition has been to increase the robustness of USN's current operations services while enabling expansion of commercially based mission critical operations services to the industry," states Tom Ingersoll, USN CEO. "As part of the SSC group, USN is now well positioned to provide expanded, long-term satellite operations services to its U.S. customers."