moon and satellites It found the textures by itself and calculated all the details: — Cloud layer — Sun lightning — Earth & moon rotation — Satellites w/ different orbital inclinations — Etc.
Category: satellites
Ukraine to be the first in Europe to launch Starlink mobile Internet
«Kyivstar» plans to launch new Starlink services this year. Their range and capabilities will be expanded over time.
Oleksandr Komarov, CEO of «Kyivstar», told the agency about the company’s plans to Reuters in Rome. According to him, messaging will be launched by the end of 2025, and mobile satellite broadband will be launched in mid-2026.
Field tests of the new communication began in late 2024 as part of an agreement with SpaceX. For its part, Elon Musk’s space company will launch the possibility of direct communication with mobile phones in the country.
Space-based experiments show wax-filled heat sinks keep electronics cooler for longer
An interdisciplinary research team including mechanical science and engineering professor Mickey Clemon from the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is investigating cooling methods for heat sinks by performing experiments onboard a satellite currently orbiting Earth.
“University-sponsored satellites have a very low success rate of making it into space, so we’re very happy that we made it into space and that our system works,” Clemon said.
The team has published the recent findings from their ongoing study, “Investigating the performance of a heat sink for satellite avionics thermal management: From ground-level testing to space-like conditions,” in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.
A ‘Sputnik’ moment in the global AI race
When Chinese AI startup DeepSeek unveiled the open-source large language model DeepSeek-R1 in January, many referred to it as the “AI Sputnik shock” — a reference to the monumental significance of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the first satellite into orbit.
Much remains uncertain about DeepSeek’s LLM and its capabilities should not be overestimated — but its release nevertheless has sparked intense discussion about its superiority especially in terms of cost. DeepSeek claims that its model possesses reasoning abilities on par with or even superior to OpenAI’s leading models, with training costs at less than one-tenth of OpenAI’s — reportedly just $5.6 million — largely due to the use of NVIDIA’s lower-cost H800 GPUs rather than the more powerful H200 or H100 models.
Tech giants like Meta and Google have spent billions of dollars on high-performance GPUs to develop cutting-edge AI models. However, DeepSeek’s ability to produce a high-performance AI model at a significantly lower cost challenges the prevailing belief that computational power—determined by the number and quality of GPUs—is the primary driver of AI performance.
SpaceX launches UK satellite to create semiconductors in low Earth orbit — sub-zero temps and vacuum of space could advance AI data centers and quantum computing
In-space manufacturing is a relatively new field that seeks to utilize the unique characteristics of outer space and/or low-Earth orbit to achieve fabrication methods not possible on Earth. Space Forge’s primary goals are to produce semiconductors for data center, quantum, and military use cases, using “space-derived crystal seeds” to initiate semiconductor growth, utilizing unlimited vacuum and subzero temperatures for manufacturing, and then returning the chips to Earth for packaging.
The ForgeStar-1 satellite will not bring the cargo it manufactures back to Earth at the completion of its mission. Acting more as a proof-of-concept and prototype for a litany of technologies engineered by Space Forge, the satellite will be tasked with running through the successful application of key technologies for in-space manufacturing, and will end its mission with a spectacular fireball.
Space Forge plans to test both the best-case and worst-case scenarios for the satellite’s recovery. First, it will deploy its proprietary Pridwen heat shield and on-orbit controls to steer the satellite, and then test its failsafe mechanism, which involves disintegrating the craft in orbit.
Rocket Lab to launch European navigation tech demo satellites
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab will launch a pair of European navigation technology demonstration satellites, as Europe again is forced to look outside the continent for launch services.
Rocket Lab announced June 25 it received a contract from the European Space Agency for the launch of two smallsats to test a proposed future low Earth orbit positioning, navigation and timing, or LEO-PNT constellation. Rocket Lab will launch the satellites on an Electron from its New Zealand launch complex no earlier than December.
The Pathfinder A satellites, one built by GMV and the other by Thales Alenia Space, are the first for a 10-satellite constellation intended to demonstrate LEO-PNT. The satellites will be launched into orbits of 510 kilometers.
Supernova remnant SNR J0450.4−7050 investigated in detail
An international team of astronomers has employed various satellites and ground-based telescopes to perform multiwavelength observations of a supernova remnant known as SNR J0450.4−7050. Results of the observational campaign, published June 18 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield new insights into the properties of this remnant, finding that it is much larger than previously thought.
Supernova remnants (SNRs) are diffuse, expanding structures resulting from a supernova explosion, which usually last several hundred thousand years before dispersing into the interstellar medium (ISM). Observations show that SNRs contain ejected material expanding from the explosion and other interstellar material that has been swept up by the passage of the shockwave from the exploded star.
Studies of SNRs beyond the Milky Way are crucial for understanding their feedback in different evolutionary phases and gaining insights into their local ISM. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the galaxies that has its SNR population explored in detail.
2032 ‘City-Killer’ Impact Threatens Earth’s Satellites, Study Finds
If a huge asteroid smashes into the Moon in 2032, the gigantic explosion would send debris streaming towards Earth that would threaten satellites and create a spectacular meteor shower, according to researchers.
Earlier this year there were briefly fears that the 60-metre-wide (200-foot-wide) asteroid called 2024 YR4, which is big enough to level a city, would strike Earth on December 22, 2032.
It was given the highest chance – 3.1 percent – of hitting our home planet that scientists have ever measured for such a giant space rock.