Orbital Sidekick finalizes $16 million round led by Temasek
Monday, 12 April 2021 06:00
Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO — Orbital Sidekick announced a $16 million Series A funding round April 13 led by Singapore investment giant Temasek that clears the way for the company to complete development of its first constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites.
Blue Origin to perform dress rehearsal for crewed New Shepard flights
Monday, 12 April 2021 03:06 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — A test flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle, scheduled for as soon as April 14, will be a dress rehearsal for long-awaited crewed flights.
Blue Origin said April 12 that it will perform “astronaut operational exercises” before and after the flight of the vehicle at the company’s West Texas test site.
Space Development Agency issues new request for information from satellite vendors
Sunday, 11 April 2021 21:54 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency wants to hear from satellite manufacturers about their capabilities to support the agency’s plans to deploy a large network of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit.
SDA in a request for information issued April 10 asks companies that intend to compete for an upcoming contract to confirm that they will be able to meet specific technical requirements.
DARPA selects Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin to develop spacecraft for nuclear propulsion demo
Sunday, 11 April 2021 20:32 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency selected Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin to develop competing spacecraft concepts for a demonstration of nuclear thermal propulsion, the agency announced April 12.
Under a program called DRACO, short for demonstration rocket for agile cislunar operations, DARPA wants to demonstrate nuclear thermal propulsion technology — using a nuclear reactor to heat up rocket fuel to generate thrust.
MEV-2 servicer successfully docks to live Intelsat satellite
Sunday, 11 April 2021 20:19 Write a comment
TAMPA, Fla. — Northrop Grumman’s MEV-2 satellite servicer successfully docked April 12 with Intelsat’s in-orbit 10-02 spacecraft.
The maneuver was completed at 1:34 p.m. Eastern, marking the first time a satellite servicer has docked with an in-service commercial satellite in geosynchronous orbit (GEO).
Atlantic Council calls for U.S. and allies to lead global efforts on space security
Sunday, 11 April 2021 20:02 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The Atlantic Council, an international security think tank, released a 100-page report that calls on the United States and allies to advocate for new global rules for safe activities in outer space.
L3Harris and Raytheon win contracts to define future geostationary imagers
Sunday, 11 April 2021 19:54 Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO – L3Harris Technologies and Raytheon Intelligence & Space won NASA contracts to carry forward studies of next-generation imagers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary and Extended Orbits (GEO-XO) satellites.
The one-year, firm-fixed price contracts worth about $6 million apiece set the stage for the two weather sensor leaders to compete to build infrared and visible-imaging instruments for the NOAA satellites to follow the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R (GOES-R) series.
Why primordial asteroids that avoided massive collisions all seem to be about the same size
Sunday, 11 April 2021 13:42 Write a comment
Planetary systems form out of the remnant gas and dust of a primordial star. The material collapses into a protoplanetary disk around the young star, and the clumps that form within the disk eventually become planets, asteroids, or other bodies. Although we understand the big picture of planetary formation, we've yet to fully understand the details. That's because the details are complicated.
Take, for example, the mystery of asteroids and collisions. You would think that planets and asteroids formed gradually: small clumps colliding with others to make bigger clumps. As an object gets bigger, it would be more likely to attract other bodies, and thus be more likely to experience collisions. But as a recent study shows, that isn't always the case with asteroids.
Many asteroids can be grouped into families, groups that are similar in their chemical composition.
New laser to help clear the sky of space debris
Sunday, 11 April 2021 12:10 Write a comment
Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have harnessed a technique that helps telescopes see objects in the night sky more clearly to fight against dangerous and costly space debris.
The researchers' work on adaptive optics—which removes the haziness caused by turbulence in the atmosphere—has been applied to a new 'guide star' laser for better identifying, tracking and safely moving space debris.
Space debris is a major threat to the $US700 billion of space infrastructure delivering vital services around the globe each day. With laser guide star adaptive optics, this infrastructure now has a new line of defense.
The optics that focus and direct the guide star laser have been developed by the ANU researchers with colleagues from Electro Optic Systems (EOS), RMIT University, Japan and the U.S. as part of the Space Environment Research Centre (SERC).
EOS will now commercialize the new guide star laser technology, which could also be incorporated in tool kits to enable high-bandwidth ground to space satellite communications.
The laser beams used for tracking space junk use infrared light and aren't visible.
Russians celebrate 60 years since Gagarin's spaceflight
Sunday, 11 April 2021 11:55 Write a comment
Russians on Monday celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first manned flight to space carried out by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as the Soviet hero remains one of the most admired figures in the country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to travel to Engels, a city in the south of the country on the banks of the Volga river, to the site of the cosmonaut's landing where a memorial stands to UAE selects new astronauts, including first woman
Sunday, 11 April 2021 11:30 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The United Arab Emirates doubled the size of its astronaut corps April 10 with the selection of two new astronauts, including the first woman, who will train at NASA starting later this year.
How do we know if an asteroid headed our way is dangerous?
Sunday, 11 April 2021 09:15 Write a comment
There are a lot of things that pose a threat to our planet—climate change, natural disasters, and solar flares, for example. But one threat in particular often captures public imagination, finding itself popularised in books and films and regularly generating alarming headlines: asteroids.
In our solar system there are millions of space rocks known as asteroids. Ranging in size from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres, these objects are mostly left over from the formation of our planets 4.6 billion years ago. They are building blocks that didn't quite make it into fully fledged worlds.
Asteroids and other objects that make a closest approach to our sun of less than 1.3 astronomical units (1 astronomical unit, AU, is the Earth-Sun distance) are known as
Five things to know about Gagarin's journey to space
Sunday, 11 April 2021 08:23 Write a comment
Sixty years ago on Monday cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, securing victory for Moscow in its race with Washington and marking a new chapter in the history of space exploration.
Decades later, his journey has become shrouded in myth after many details about the historic mission were for years kept secret by the Soviets.
Here are five things to know about Gagarin's legendary flight:
'Let's go!'
A trained steel worker turned military pilot, Gagarin was selected from thousands of candidates to undergo the rigorous training required for a space flight.
Apart from showing excellent results in his tests, Gagarin, then aged 27, also reportedly stood out by removing his shoes before entering the Vostok spacecraft designated for the mission, a custom in Russia when entering a home.
On April 12, 1961, as Gagarin's flight took off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan, he exclaimed his iconic catchphrase "Poekhali!", or "Let's go!" in Russian.
Risky business
The flight lasted just 108 minutes as the Vostok completed one loop around the Earth.
Once Gagarin safely returned home, the success of his mission outshone the fact that not everything went according to plan.
Exolaunch entering orbital debris market with eco-friendly space tugs
Sunday, 11 April 2021 08:00 Write a comment
TAMPA, Fla. — German launch services provider Exolaunch is developing a line of eco-friendly space tugs called Reliant, designed to clean up debris after sending satellites to custom orbits.
Flight tests will start in the second half of 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission with customer payloads, according to Exolaunch vice president of launch services Jeanne Medvedeva.
Soviet cosmonaut made pioneering spaceflight 60 years ago
Sunday, 11 April 2021 07:49 Write a comment
