Copernical Team
Reprogrammable satellite shipped to launch site
An advanced telecommunications satellite that can be completely repurposed in orbit has arrived at its launch site of Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
Musk set to invest up to $30 billion in Starlink
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said Tuesday he plans to invest up to 30 billion dollars to develop his ambitious Starlink satellite internet service.
Starlink plans to deploy thousands of low-orbit satellites to provide high-speed internet to isolated and poorly connected areas.
It has so far deployed over 1,500 satellites and by August it will be able to provide coverage everywhere in the world except the North and South Poles, Musk told the Mobile World Congress, a telecoms industry conference underway in Barcelona, by video.
The Tesla chief said he expects to invest "at least five billion dollars, and maybe as much as ten billion" in Starlink before the service has a positive cash flow.
"Then over time it is going to be a multiple of that, and that would be 20 or 30 billion dollars. It is a lot basically," he added.
Starlink is currently operating in about a dozen countries, with more being added, and it currently has just over 69,000 active users, Musk said.
"We are on our way I think to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users, within 12 months," he added.
Exploring deep space: How can we get there safely and sustainably?
Once the sole dominion of sci-fi movies and novels, the subject of deep space exploration and interplanetary colonization has moved several steps closer to becoming a reality thanks to major advances in aerospace engineering, medicine, and physics.
Sending astronauts to the International Space Station for extended missions has provided a wealth of information about keeping humans alive in the challenging environment of space. Back on earth, scientists and engineers attempt to replicate off-world conditions to test limits for more ambitious missions.
Why "nuclear batteries" offer a new approach to carbon-free energy
We may be on the brink of a new paradigm for nuclear power, a group of nuclear specialists suggested recently in The Bridge, the journal of the National Academy of Engineering. Much as large, expensive, and centralized computers gave way to the widely distributed PCs of today, a new generation of relatively tiny and inexpensive factory-built reactors, designed for autonomous plug-and-play operat Setting gold and platinum standards where few have gone before
Like two superheroes finally joining forces, Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine - generator of the world's most powerful electrical pulses - and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility - the planet's most energetic laser source - in a series of 10 experiments have detailed the responses of gold and platinum at pressures so extreme that their atomic structures mom Detergent maker helps NASA explore space laundry
A detergent maker and NASA are teaming up to research how astronauts could do laundry in space, especially on Deep Space missions, using minimal energy and water.
Procter & Gamble has signed a pact with NASA, known as a Space Act Agreement. Under the pact, NASA seeks laundry solutions in space, while the detergent, Tide, gains publicity and furthers product development. Both parties Throwing an 'axion bomb' into a black hole challenges fundamental law of physics
Singularities such as those at the centre of black holes, where density becomes infinite, are often said to be places where physics 'breaks down'. However, this doesn't mean that 'anything' could happen, and physicists are interested in which laws could break down, and how.
Now, a research team from Imperial College London and the Cockcroft Institute and Lancaster University have proposed A new chapter for space sustainability
Each day, new and innovative space technologies are being developed in countries around the world, and with that, a steady stream of satellites, rockets, cargo ships, and crew vehicles are being launched into the Earth's orbit and beyond. So what happens to these systems when they come to the end of their functional life, or malfunction and break?
Some are programmed to re-enter the Earth' China's relay satellites facilitate clear, smooth space-ground communication
A space-based measurement and control system composed of multiple relay satellites has guaranteed clear and smooth communication between ground control and Chinese astronauts in space.
The relay satellites Tianlian I-03, Tianlian I-04 and Tianlian II-01 have been providing stable measurement and data relay support for the complex consisting of Tianhe core module, the cargo craft Tianzhou-2 War in Space is Coming
A new arms race is unfolding among spacefaring nations. Space experts have been telling us about contested space for the last several years. The number of active satellites is exploding from about 1,000 a few years ago to an expected 50,000+ within 10 years. The sky is indeed getting very congested.
These satellites provide worldwide communications, GPS navigation, weather forecasting and