Eutelsat taking financial hit from TV sanctions against Russia and Iran
Thursday, 22 December 2022 20:05
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French satellite operator Eutelsat said Dec. 22 it stands to lose up to 15 million euros ($16 million) in annual revenues from restricting broadcasts in Russia and Iran to comply with sanctions.
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Construction begins on NASA's next-generation asteroid hunter
Thursday, 22 December 2022 20:03
As NASA's Mars InSight mission comes to an end, JPL engineers say farewell to its twin
Thursday, 22 December 2022 19:42 Write a comment
Pranay Mishra reached down to the floor of his workplace and scooped a handful of what might be the closest thing on Earth to the feel of Martian soil.
"This is actually unprocessed garnet," he said, sifting the gray granules in his palm. Tiny ruby-colored flecks caught the light. Mixed with diatomaceous earth, a fine powder of algae fossils often used by gardeners, the coarse gray stuff makes a decent substitute for the density and texture of Mars' dirt. The only difference is that on Mars, no one has to clean it up.
"I've torn up three pairs of shoes working in this," the JPL systems engineer said with a laugh. "It follows you home. It's in your car, it's in your house—it's everywhere."
At some point in the next several weeks, a critical amount of actual Mars dust will cover the solar panels of NASA's InSight lander, which has been studying the red planet's crust, mantle, core and seismic activity since 2018. The batteries won't generate enough voltage to keep the spacecraft's instruments online.
Early results from NASA's DART mission
Thursday, 22 December 2022 19:09 Write a comment
Northrop Grumman clears key hurdle for space-based solar power
Thursday, 22 December 2022 16:53 Write a comment
Northrop Grumman has completed ground-based tests to demonstrate critical technology required for a 2025 demonstration of space-based solar power.
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South Korean pharma invests $50 million in Axiom Space
Thursday, 22 December 2022 16:36 Write a comment
Boryung, a South Korean pharmaceutical company, has decided to invest $50 million in U.S. commercial space station developer Axiom Space’s Series C funding round.
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How the Hera asteroid mission will phone home
Thursday, 22 December 2022 15:25 Write a comment
This is the antenna that will transmit back the first close-up images of the distant Dimorphos asteroid since its orbit was shifted by a collision with NASA's DART spacecraft.
The 1.13-m diameter High Gain Antenna of ESA's Hera mission went through a week-long test campaign at the Compact Antenna Test Range, part of the Agency's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands.
The CATR's metal walls isolate external radio signals while its foam-spike-lined interior absorb radio signals to prevent reflections and reproduce the empty void of space. Each test session took more than 10 hours, with the antenna rotated a degree at a time to build up a 360 degree picture of the antenna's detailed signal shape.
"The High Gain Antenna is really a crucial part of our mission—it will be our sole means of receiving data and sending commands with the volume we need, with the Low Gain Antenna as backup for low data rate emergency communications," explains Hera antenna engineer Victoria Iza.
Hera system engineer Paolo Concari adds, "Coupled with an innovative deep-space transponder, this antenna will also perform science in its own right.
Studies flag environmental impact of reentry
Thursday, 22 December 2022 14:40 Write a comment
The growing scale and pace of launch activities call for more monitoring and regulation to minimize their potential impact on the Earth’s atmosphere.
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First sample depot on Mars
Thursday, 22 December 2022 13:05 Write a comment
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First sample depot on Mars Flight control, space weather and debris: What an astronaut needs to know
Thursday, 22 December 2022 13:00 Write a comment
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Recently, Andreas Mogensen, now getting ready for his ‘Huginn’ mission to the ISS in 2023, stopped by ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet with some of the experts who keep our satellites flying.
Andreas usually works at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as an ISS ‘capcom’, and we don’t often see him in Europe. A few months back, while returning to Germany for some training at ESA’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne, we seized the opportunity to ask him if he’d like to stop over in Darmstadt for a look behind the
China sets out clear and independent long-term vision for space
Thursday, 22 December 2022 12:09 Write a comment
China’s main space contractor is working towards making the country a leading space power with a focus on developing capabilities, space infrastructure and self-reliance.
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Independent panel to investigate Vega C launch failure
Thursday, 22 December 2022 11:56 Write a comment
Arianespace and the European Space Agency will establish an independent commission to investigate the Vega C launch failure Dec. 20 that resulted in the loss of two satellites and new questions about the future of European space access.
Terran Orbital delivers 10 satellite buses to Lockheed Martin for U.S. military constellation
Thursday, 22 December 2022 10:00 Write a comment
Terran Orbital announced Dec. 22 it has completed delivery of 10 satellite buses ordered by Lockheed Martin for the Space Development Agency's mesh network in low Earth orbit.
The post Terran Orbital delivers 10 satellite buses to Lockheed Martin for U.S.
Underground Italian lab searches for signals of quantum gravity
Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:34 Write a comment
For decades physicists have been hunting for a quantum-gravity model that would unify quantum physics, the laws that govern the very small, and gravity. One major obstacle has been the difficulty in testing the predictions of candidate models experimentally. But some of the models predict an effect that can be probed in the lab: a very small violation of a fundamental quantum tenet called the Pa Chinese space-tracking ship sets sail for new missions
Thursday, 22 December 2022 09:34 Write a comment
China's space-tracking ship, Yuanwang 3, set sail on Sunday for a new round of spacecraft monitoring missions. The ship, which is a second-generation vessel and responsible for monitoring high-, medium-, and low-orbit satellites, spaceships, and space station modules, has a long history of service. It was launched over 20 years ago and has completed more than 100 missions with a 100% success rat