Amazon contracts nine Atlas 5 missions for Kuiper broadband satellites
Monday, 19 April 2021 15:25
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TAMPA, Fla. — Amazon has ordered nine Atlas 5 rockets from United Launch Alliance to help place its 3,236-strong Project Kuiper broadband constellation.
The U.S. internet retailing giant declined to disclose a time frame for its deal with ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin known more for its government missions than commercial space.
Download our April 19 issue of SpaceNews magazine
Monday, 19 April 2021 14:32 Write a comment
Download the digital edition of the April 19 issue of SpaceNews magazine, provided compliments of Blacksky.
Inside the April 19 issue:
1. Business of Climate Change
How ESG is transforming the satellite industry
Gulf Energy excludes Thaicom in $5.4 billion buyout deal for parent company InTouch
Monday, 19 April 2021 14:01 Write a comment
TAMPA, Fla. — Gulf Energy Development, a Thailand-based power producer, offered April 19 to buy out the parent company of Thai satellite operator Thaicom for as much as 169 billion baht ($5.4 billion).
But Bangkok-based Gulf Energy said it will only pursue the deal for Intouch Holdings, which also owns Thailand’s largest wireless operator Advanced Info Service (AIS), if it can buy the group without having to acquire the rest of Thaicom.
Can a new type of glacier on Mars aid future astronauts?
Monday, 19 April 2021 13:50 Write a comment
On April 21, 1908, near Earth's North Pole, the Arctic explorer Frederick Albert Cook scrawled in his diary a memorable phrase: "We were the only pulsating creatures in a dead world of ice." These words may soon take on new significance for humankind in another dead world of hidden ice, submerged beneath the red sand of its frigid deserts. This dead world is Mars, and the desert is the planet's mid-latitude region known as Arcadia Planitia.
Pre-launch media Q+A with astronaut Thomas Pesquet
Monday, 19 April 2021 13:20 Write a comment
Video:
00:30:26
ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is set to go back to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on 22 April 2021.
Watch the replay of the media Q+A session held on 19 April with Thomas (in English and French) to learn more about his upcoming Alpha mission to the ISS.
Mission Alpha media event at launch site
Monday, 19 April 2021 13:20 Write a comment
Video:
00:30:26
Watch the replay of the media session held on 19 April 2021 with French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet held in English and French to learn more about his upcoming Alpha mission.
Thomas is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. Called ‘Alpha’ the mission will see a European astronaut launch on a US spacecraft for the first time in over a decade. Thomas is flying alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide on the Crew Dragon.
Launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, Thomas will be the first
Op-ed | Canada’s space sector set for a relaunch
Monday, 19 April 2021 12:36 Write a comment
On April 1, MDA, Canada’s leading space technology company, best known for developing the robotic Canadarm used on the International Space Station, raised 400 million Canadian dollars ($320 million) in its initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Ingenuity helicopter successfully flew on Mars: NASA
Monday, 19 April 2021 12:29 Write a comment
NASA successfully flew the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on Monday, according to data and images sent back to Earth.
"Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight - the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet," announced an engineer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the control room cheered.
A short clip sent back by the Perseverance rover showed SpaceX has given up trying to catch rocket fairings—fishing them out of the ocean is fine
Monday, 19 April 2021 11:25 Write a comment
If there is one driving force in the commercial space industry it is economics. The whole concept of reusable booster rocket emphasizes the importance of getting launch costs down. SpaceX, the company leading the charge in trying to bring launch costs down, doesn't just recover booster rockets however. It also recovers the rocket fairings that hold the payload during launch. SpaceX's original plan was to capture the fairings as they fell back to Earth using specially equipped ships with nets to catch them before they landed in the ocean. Now, however, the company has transitioned to simply fishing fairings out of the ocean after they splash down, and that seems to be working just fine.
The economic motivation for attempting a fairing capture is simple. Salt water is corrosive, so if a fairing lands in the ocean it must be refurbished at a cost. Catching it before it hits the water would eliminate the need to refurbish it, thereby lowering the cost of reusing the fairing.
To attempt this capture, SpaceX commissioned two ships, named with their usual whimsical style: Ms.
NASA's New Horizons reaches a rare space milestone
Monday, 19 April 2021 11:10 Write a comment
In the weeks following its launch in early 2006, when NASA's New Horizons was still close to home, it took just minutes to transmit a command to the spacecraft, and hear back that the onboard computer received and was ready to carry out the instructions.
As New Horizons crossed the solar system, and its distance from Earth jumped from millions to billions of miles, that time between contacts grew from a few minutes to several hours. And on April 17 at 12:42 UTC (or April 17 at 8:42 a.m. EDT), New Horizons will reach a rare deep-space milepost—50 astronomical units from the sun, or 50 times farther from the sun than Earth is.
New Horizons is just the fifth spacecraft to reach this great distance, following the legendary Voyagers 1 and 2 and their predecessors, Pioneers 10 and 11.
Ingenuity performs first flight on Mars
Monday, 19 April 2021 10:56 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully performed the first powered aircraft flight on another planet April 19, briefing hovering above the surface of Mars.
The 1.8-kilogram helicopter performed the flight at 3:34 a.m. Eastern, but data from the flight, relayed through the Perseverance rover and another Mars orbiter, arrived at Earth a little more than three hours later.
Ingenuity helicopter successfully flew on Mars (Update)
Monday, 19 April 2021 10:05 Write a comment
NASA's experimental Mars helicopter rose from the dusty red surface into the thin air Monday, achieving the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
The triumph was hailed as a Wright Brothers moment. The mini 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) copter named Ingenuity, in fact, carried a bit of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, which made similar history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet," project manager MiMi Aung announced to her team.
Flight controllers in California confirmed Ingenuity's brief hop after receiving data via the Perseverance rover, which stood watch more than 200 feet (65 meters) away.
Celebrate Earth Day with ESA
Monday, 19 April 2021 10:05 Write a comment
At ESA, every day is Earth Day. As we humans continue to subject our home planet to increasing pressures, we are better placed than ever to understand and monitor the consequences of what we inflict. Astronauts onboard the International Space Station give us the human perspective of how beautiful Earth is, while satellites orbiting above return systematic measures to take the pulse of our planet 24 hours a day.
These measurements allow us to understand how Earth works as a system and how human activity is changing natural processes, leading to climate change. This information is fundamental to global climate
How space science is combating climate change
Monday, 19 April 2021 08:16 Write a comment
If you have been following International Space Station news, you know that hundreds of scientific experiments are performed in low-Earth orbit and the pace is only increasing. This is great news for scientists, especially those that have been preparing for years to send their experiment to the orbital outpost, but what does it mean for people on Earth?
If you are not into plasma nanoparticles, subjective time measurement in microgravity or traveling to Mars in the future, what benefit does space science have for you?
Potentially a lot. Experiments performed on the International Space Station could in fact help
