Northrop Grumman warns space sector employees of potential layoffs
Tuesday, 27 February 2024 14:10

Rough landing cuts short historic private moon lander mission
Tuesday, 27 February 2024 13:23
After the historic return of the U.S. to the surface of the moon after more than 50 years last week, a private company's lunar lander will likely have its mission cut short because of how it landed.
Houston-based Intuitive Machines managed to touch down on the moon with its Nova-C lander Odysseus, but the craft tipped over to one side, likely because it had one of its landing gear catch, company officials said. The lunar lander is not expected to be able to maintain power or communicate with mission managers beyond tomorrow.
"Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander's solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on Earth and moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning," reads an update from the company's website.
That's bad news for NASA, which paid the company $118 million as part of its Commercial Lunar Lander Services program, which tasks private companies to build hardware capable of bringing payloads to the moon. NASA has six payloads on board worth about $12 million that were aiming for eight to nine days of life before the sun set on that part of the moon, although Intuitive Machines' pre-launch target was seven days.
Redwire opens new facility in Virginia to support national security programs
Tuesday, 27 February 2024 13:00
FAA closes investigation into second Starship test flight
Tuesday, 27 February 2024 12:02

Argentina authorizes Starlink, rival Amazon Kuiper
Tuesday, 27 February 2024 06:24
Argentina on Monday gave authorization for the deployment of Starlink, the satellite internet service of Elon Musk—a fan of the South American country's self-styled new "anarcho-capitalist" President Javier Milei.
In a decision published in the government gazette, Argentina's Enacom communications authority authorized Starlink but also its new competitor from Amazon, Project Kuiper, which is due to launch this year, and the London-headquartered OneWeb.
"This means... greater freedom, greater investment and greater competition in everything related to the satellite internet market," presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni told reporters in Buenos Aires.
Adorni said the move would bring internet connectivity to "companies and people for whom, for whatever reason, other technologies don't allow" such access.
According to the Starlink website, its satellite internet service will be available in Argentina in the second quarter of 2024.
Investors inject $92 million into French maritime surveillance constellation
Tuesday, 27 February 2024 04:01

Image: ERS-2 buckles and bends during final farewell
Monday, 26 February 2024 20:14
Following a hugely successful mission and almost 30 years in orbit, ESA's ERS-2 reentered Earth's atmosphere at approximately 18:17 CET (17:17 UTC) on 21 February 2024.
Predicting the exact time and location of ERS-2's natural reentry was made more difficult by the lack of new observations of the satellite during its final revolutions around Earth.
This GIF combines some of the final images of ERS-2 tumbling through the sky. They were captured by the Tracking and Imaging Radar (TIRA) at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Germany.
TIRA's 34-m antenna tracked the satellite as it passed overhead for a few minutes on 19, 20, and 21 February. The final session took place around 8:00 CET on 21 February, still roughly 10 orbits before reentry.
By comparing the images from the three TIRA tracking sessions, we can see that ERS-2's solar array was already coming loose and no longer firmly attached to the rest of the satellite the day before re-entry.
When predicting a satellite's reentry trajectory, experts treat it as one rigid object until almost the very end.
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