Astronomy Prints 🌌: Maxar unveils first hi-res images from WorldView Legion 📸

Friday, July 19, 2024

Maxar unveils first hi-res images from WorldView Legion 📸

A SpaceNews daily newsletter | Friday, July 19, 2024

Top Stories

Maxar Intelligence has released the first high-resolution images from its new WorldView Legion satellites. The images come from a pair of satellites launched in May on a Falcon 9. The satellites are capable of collecting 30 centimeter-class imagery, providing detailed views of the Earth's surface for a wide range of applications. Maxar said the commissioning and calibration process for the first two WorldView Legion satellites is still under way. Maxar plans to launch the remaining four satellites of the WorldView Legion constellation by the end of the year. [SpaceNews]

An enhanced version of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft will be used to deorbit the International Space Station at the end of its life. NASA and SpaceX discussed this week details of the spacecraft the agency selected in June for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle under a contract worth up to $843 million. The spacecraft will feature a trunk section twice as a long as the current Dragon spacecraft, which will be designed to accommodate dozens of Draco thrusters, propellant tanks and other systems. The spacecraft will be used to provide the final push to deorbit the station and ensure it comes down in an open stretch of ocean. NASA will separately procure the launch of the deorbit vehicle, noting that the spacecraft will be too heavy to launch on a Falcon 9. [SpaceNews]

Amazon is preparing to demonstrate data relay services for NASA using Project Kuiper satellites. The company recently completed initial in-orbit demonstrations after deploying a pair of prototype spacecraft last year. In a test planned for next spring, Amazon aims to transmit and receive representative data from a mission operations center created specifically for NASA's Communication Services Project (CSP) and the Kuiper production satellites Amazon is building in-house. Those upcoming tests will use production satellites that Amazon expects to start launching in the fourth quarter of this year. [SpaceNews]

Other News

China launched an imaging satellite Thursday night. A Long March 4B rocket lifted off at 11:03 p.m. Eastern from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. It placed into orbit Gaofen-11 05, the latest in a series of high-resolution imaging satellites that may be used for both civilian and military applications. [Xinhua]

Astra closed a deal to take the company private. The company announced before markets opened Thursday that it had completed an agreement with the company's co-founders to take the company private at 50 cents per share, ending public trading of Astra's stock. The launch vehicle and satellite propulsion company went public through a SPAC merger a little more than three years ago but lost more than 99% of its value as the market soured on SPAC deals and as Astra struggled with its small launch vehicle. [SpaceNews]

Any evidence of life on two icy moons in the solar system could be easier to find that previously thought. A new study suggests that if the moons of Enceladus and Europa have life, amino acids could be preserved in ice as little as 20 centimeters below the surface on Europa and within a few millimeters of the surface on Enceladus. That means any future missions to those moons could easily dig deep enough into the surface to collect ice containing any of those biosignatures. [NASA]

USB-C for Space

"One requirement before we make much progress in this area is some kind of common interfaces. We can't even do it on the ground. We can't agree on one cellphone charging connector."

— Dave Gallagher, associate director for strategic integration at JPL, discussing a challenge for satellite refueling during a panel discussion at the COSPAR Scientific Assembly Thursday.