Top Stories
SpaceX launched a NASA Earth science satellite overnight. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 1:33 a.m. Eastern and placed into orbit NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, spacecraft. The nearly billion-dollar spacecraft will collect data to monitor ocean biology as well as clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere. The launch was the first U.S. government mission to go to polar orbit from Cape Canaveral since 1960. SpaceX conducted the launch from Florida, rather than Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, at the request of the PACE mission team, which wanted to be closer to its home at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. [SpaceNews]
Earth observation company BlackSky has won a $50 million deal from the Indonesia government. BlackSky will work with Thales Alenia Space to establish the building blocks of a sovereign Earth imaging satellite network tailored to Indonesia's national security needs. The Indonesian government will gain access to BlackSky's high-revisit imagery and analytics and will own two of BlackSky's next-generation Earth observation satellites. Thales Alenia Space was selected in December to deliver a dedicated Earth observation constellation to the Indonesian Ministry of Defense, combining both radar and optical sensors. [SpaceNews]
Space tracking company Slingshot Aerospace has a new CEO. The company announced Wednesday it hired Tim Solms, who has previously worked at Microsoft, Dell, VMware and most recently Dun & Bradstreet. Melanie Stricklan, co-founder and former CEO, left the company last year. The company operates a global network of ground-based telescopes to track space objects, and provides space traffic control software used by satellite operators to coordinate satellite maneuvers. [SpaceNews]
Kuva Space, a Finnish hyperspectral imaging startup, is establishing a U.S. office. Kuva Space U.S., based in northern Virginia, will allow the company to work with potential U.S. government customers for hyperspectral imagery. Former Iceye US CEO Jerry Welsh, a Kuva Space U.S. board member, is leading the company's efforts to enter the U.S. market. Kuva Space plans to launch its first two satellites later this year. [SpaceNews]
China is preparing to launch two experimental satellites for a future lunar constellation. The Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites are due to launch along with Queqiao-2, a lunar communications relay satellite to support several upcoming Chang'e lunar farside and south pole missions. The spacecraft will fly in formation in lunar orbit and conduct tests for navigation and communications to support planning for a constellation that will offer such services at the moon. [SpaceNews]
| |  There's a new MILSATCOM operator in town: Astranis.
In 2023, Astranis launched the world's first MicroGEO communications satellite — and used it to demonstrate end-to-end connectivity for a national security customer. Astranis has also successfully demonstrated passing the Space Force's Protected Tactical Waveform through our proprietary Software-Defined Radio.
This makes Astranis one of just a few operators capable of supporting government waveforms on commercial satellites. And it makes MicroGEO the smallest, most agile satellite to do so by a wide margin.
Learn more here. | | | Other News
Small launch vehicle companies are looking for niches to allow them to better compete with SpaceX's Transporter rideshare missions. During a panel Wednesday at the SmallSat Symposium in California, executives of launch companies pointed to their ability to launch missions directly to specific orbits or provide other premium services to customers who are not price-sensitive. Transporter launches are significantly cheaper on a per-kilogram basis than dedicated small launch vehicles, and one executive from a small launch company argued that SpaceX started the Transporter missions with "the sole purpose of trying to kill new entrants like us." [SpaceNews]
The Japanese government is funding work by a startup to upgrade a water-based satellite propulsion system. Pale Blue won a grant worth up to $27 million to develop a version of its Resistojet thruster for use on larger spacecraft. The current version of Resistojet was tested in space last March on a 6U cubesat, but the larger thruster would be used on spacecraft weighing up to 500 kilograms. The company plans to demonstrate ion and Hall effect thrusters, which use electricity and magnetic fields to accelerate propellant, to improve efficiency. [SpaceNews]
India is planning a significant increase in its launch cadence. IN-SPACe, the Indian agency designed to promote private sector launch activity, said that 30 launches are planned for the next 15 months by the Indian space agency ISRO and its commercial arm, New Space India Ltd., as well as private ventures. Nearly half of those launches will be commercial. India carried out seven launches in 2023. [India Today]
NASA's Lucy spacecraft has completed a key maneuver. The spacecraft fired its main engine for 36 minutes over the weekend after a six-minute burn last week. The maneuver puts the spacecraft on course to make a gravity-assist flyby of Earth late this year that will send the spacecraft to its destination, the Trojan asteroids that follow and precede Jupiter in its orbit around the sun. [Space.com]
A moon of Saturn likened to the Death Star may have a subsurface ocean. Scientists studying the moon Mimas concluded that a wobble in its orbit around Saturn could only be explained if there is a liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface. The finding was surprising because, unlike some other moons known to have oceans, the surface of Mimas had not shown any signs of geological activity that hinted at the presence of an ocean. The surface is instead cratered, including one large one that makes Mimas look like Star Wars' Death Star. [Nature]
| | Some Try to Break Them, Though
"I think one fantastic thing about this whole industry is that we all have to respect the laws of physics."
– Sandy Tirtey, director of global commercial launch services at Rocket Lab, during a panel discussion about launch services at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, California, on Wednesday.
| | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment