Basic structure for new generation of weather satellites
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35
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Six metres high, weighting 1000 kilograms and assembled from over 24,000 parts: These are the dimensions of the second generation of European weather satellites, which in future will collect weather data some 800 kilometres above us.
The basic structure of the second flight model was assembled in RUAG Space's clean rooms in Zurich and is now being delivered to customers by special 31-metre Starliner test flight scheduled for July 30
Thursday, 06 May 2021 21:51 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing have scheduled a second uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft for July 30.
In separate statements, the agency and the company said they were planning to launch the Starliner on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at 2:53 p.m.
Northrop Grumman to supply navigation payloads for DARPA’s Blackjack satellites
Thursday, 06 May 2021 21:12 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 million contract to provide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) payloads for the Blackjack program.
Blackjack is a DARPA project to demonstrate the military utility of small satellites in low Earth orbit to provide communications, missile warning and PNT.
Intelsat and SES on course for mammoth C-band payments
Thursday, 06 May 2021 20:43 Write a comment
- Intelsat’s Q1 earnings down 50% year over year despite higher revenue due to Gogo acquisition
- COVID-19 drags down SES Q1 revenue; operator says video decline is slowing
- Intelsat and SES C-band legal battle rages on
NASA Invites Public, Media to Watch Asteroid Mission Begin Return to Earth
Thursday, 06 May 2021 19:41 Write a comment
NASA invites the public and the media to watch its first asteroid sample return mission begin a two-year cruise home at 4 p.m. EDT Monday, May 10, on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. Boeing's troubled Starliner capsule now aiming for July launch
Thursday, 06 May 2021 18:14 Write a comment
NASA and Boeing are now targeting July 30 for an uncrewed test flight of the aerospace company's troubled Starliner capsule to the International Space Station, they announced Thursday.
The launch has been postponed multiple times, with the last announced date of April scuppered due to a cold snap that caused extensive power outages in Texas in March.
The NASA Commercial Crew program is run partly from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, though it launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Lift-off is now scheduled for 2:53 pm Eastern Time (1853 GMT) on July 30.
"NASA and Boeing have done an incredible amount of work to get to this point," said Steve Stich, Commercial Crew program manager.
Isar Aerospace wins three-way DLR microlauncher competition
Thursday, 06 May 2021 14:29 Write a comment
VALLETTA, Malta — German launch startup Isar Aerospace beat out Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse Technologies to win a DLR endorsement that clears the way for it to secure 11 million euros from the European Space Agency’s Boost! program.
First Ariane 6 fairing at Europe’s Spaceport
Thursday, 06 May 2021 13:29 Write a comment
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First Ariane 6 fairing at Europe’s Spaceport Space Force tells troops to focus on digital skills
Thursday, 06 May 2021 12:47 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force on May 6 released a vision document that calls on its military and civilian workforce to embrace a “digital culture.”
The Space Force’s “Vision for a Digital Service” says the service will need people who are digitally minded and technology savvy.
Space weather is difficult to predict—with only an hour to prevent disasters on Earth
Thursday, 06 May 2021 12:13 Write a comment
Recent developments at the forefront of astronomy allow us to observe that planets orbiting other stars have weather. Indeed, we have known that other planets in our own solar system have weather, in many cases more extreme than our own.
Our lives are affected by short-term atmospheric variations of weather on Earth, and we fear that longer-term climate change will also have a large impact. The recently coined term "space weather" refers to effects that arise in space but affect Earth and regions around it. More subtle than meteorological weather, space weather usually acts on technological systems, and has potential impacts that range from communication disruption to power grid failures.
Image: NASA's Lucy high gain antenna up close
Thursday, 06 May 2021 11:25 Write a comment
Lucy's epic journey to observe Jupiter's Trojan asteroids requires a reliable communications link back to Earth, and so the spacecraft is outfitted with a 6.5-ft. (2-meter)-wide high gain antenna for this task.
Designed and built by Lockheed Martin, this same style antenna has been used to return science data from Mars and transfer back photos of asteroid Bennu. Lucy's antenna will send back the first-ever close up images and spectra of Trojan asteroids.
The signal from the antenna will also help determine the mass of these never-before-visited space objects revealed by tiny changes in frequency caused by the Doppler effect.
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NASA's On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission ready for spacecraft build
Thursday, 06 May 2021 11:21 Write a comment
NASA is one step closer to robotically refueling a satellite and demonstrating in-space assembly and manufacturing thanks to the completion of an important milestone.
In April 2021, NASA and Maxar Technologies successfully completed the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission spacecraft accommodation Critical Design Review (CDR). This milestone demonstrates that the maturity of the design for the OSAM-1 spacecraft bus is appropriate to support proceeding with fabrication, assembly, integration, and testing.
OSAM-1 will, for the first time ever, robotically refuel a U.S. government satellite not designed to be serviced. The spacecraft will consist of a servicing payload, provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with two robotic arms that will be attached to the spacecraft bus. The bus will also incorporate a payload called Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) that will demonstrate in-space assembly and manufacturing. SPIDER will use a third robotic arm to assemble a communications antenna and an element called MakerSat built by Tethers Unlimited to manufacture a beam. The spacecraft bus and SPIDER are being built by Maxar Technologies.
Lunar crater radio telescope: Illuminating the cosmic dark ages
Thursday, 06 May 2021 11:14 Write a comment
After years of development, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) project has been awarded $500,000 to support additional work as it enters Phase II of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. While not yet a NASA mission, the LCRT describes a mission concept that could transform humanity's view of the cosmos.
The LCRT's primary objective would be to measure the long-wavelength radio waves generated by the cosmic Dark Ages—a period that lasted for a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, but before the first stars blinked into existence. Cosmologists know little about this period, but came the answers to some of science's biggest mysteries may be locked in the long-wavelength radio emissions generated by the gas that would have filled the universe during that time.
"While there were no stars, there was ample hydrogen during the universe's Dark Ages—hydrogen that would eventually serve as the raw material for the first stars," said Joseph Lazio, radio astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and a member of the LCRT team.
Masked campaign
Thursday, 06 May 2021 09:32 Write a comment
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Researchers take a group photo in front of the Air Zero G aircraft to mark the end of the 75th ESA parabolic flight campaign. The campaign was the third to take place under Covid-19 restrictions, and ran from 21 to 30 April in Bordeaux, France.
Participants and coordinators adjusted to a new way of flying: PCR tests were required to enter France, as well as rapid antigen or RT LAMP tests each day for every participant. Facilities on the ground as well as on board were adapted to allow for social distancing and cleanliness requirements. Surgical masks were worn