NASA is now just weeks away from launching its next mission to find undiscovered worlds beyond our solar system.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, the space agency revealed its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is undergoing the final preparations in Florida ahead of its April 16 launch.
The new ‘planet hunter’ set to be Kepler’s successor is equipped with four cameras that will allow it to view 85 percent of the entire sky, as it searches exoplanets orbiting stars less than 300 light-years away.
China’s Tiangong-1 space station is set to make an uncontrolled reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere on or around April 1. The update from the Aerospace Corporation, which is tracking the abandoned orbital laboratory, predicts that it will make its final plunge at 00:00 GMT on April 1 with a margin of error of ±36 hours, when it will burn up somewhere between 43° North and 43° South latitudes.
Launched on September 30, 2011 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China, atop a Long March 2F/G rocket, the Tiangong-1 was China’s first space station and was designed to accommodate two astronauts. In 2012, it was visited by the three-astronaut Shenzhou 9 mission that included China’s first female astronaut, and in 2013 by Shenzhou 10.
Unfortunately, there was some undisclosed malfunction aboard the spacecraft after the last visit and two years ago the Chinese National Space Administration said that it had lost telemetry contact with the 8,500-kg (18,740-lb) Tiangong-1. The agency is notoriously secretive, but it is highly probable that the spacecraft is inactive and amateur astronomers claim that it has definitely been dormant since June 2016.
A previously-used Falcon 9 booster soared to life at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Sunday for its Static Fire test ahead of lifting the fifth set of Iridium-NEXT communications satellites on Thursday, marking the start of a string of Falcon 9 missions lined up for March and April. Liftoff is targeting 14:19 UTC on March 29 to boost the number of Iridium-NEXT satellites in orbit to 50 as the Virginia-based communications company continues pushing toward having the full Iridium-NEXT constellation in operation by the end of summer.
Sunday’s Static Fire test occurred near the opening of the day’s test window at 7 a.m. and was expected to run for seven seconds to exercise the nine previously-flown Merlin 1D engines of Booster 1041, gearing up for its second Low Earth Orbit mission. The booster was first in action for the third Iridium-NEXT mission in October 2017 and successfully returned via a Drone Ship landing in the Pacific Ocean as SpaceX has yet to conduct its first return-to-launch-site recovery from Vandenberg.
As of this month, the US satellite Vanguard I has spent 60 years in orbit and it remains the oldest man-made object in space. Vanguard I was the fourth satellite launched into orbit — following the USSR’s Sputnik I and II and the US’ Explorer I. But none of the first three remain in orbit today and though Vanguard I can’t send signals back to Earth anymore, it’s still providing valuable data for researchers.
The first two attempts to launch the first Vanguard satellite failed, but on March 17th, 1958, Vanguard I was successfully placed into orbit. It was manufactured by the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which published a lookback this week honoring the satellite’s 60 years of service, and was part of a project that aimed to study Earth’s geophysical phenomena from space. The Vanguard Project was established as part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical Year — a multi-national effort to study geophysical phenomena during a period of time when the sun’s sunspot activity would be at a peak.
WASHINGTON — The Air Force on Wednesday awarded two major launch contracts to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.
Under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program, SpaceX received a $290 million firm-fixed-price contract for three GPS 3 missions. ULA was awarded a $351 million firm-fixed-price deal for Air Force Space Command (AFSPC)-8 and AFSPC-12 satellites launches.
The contracts include launch vehicle production, mission integration, launch operations and spaceflight certification. The missions will be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station or Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Satellite operators must get government approval to launch hardware into orbit. The FCC says that Swarm Technologies launched four small satellites in January without authorization.
The European Space Agency created the world’s first thruster which allows satellites to remain in orbit for years longer than they currently do. The secret? The thruster runs on particles of air in the atmosphere.
Others have tried to improve the staying power of satellites before, but most are still limited by the amount of fuel they can carry. The new ion thruster “breathes” the rare air particles in the top of the atmosphere, allowing the satellites to remain without immediate need for refueling.
The thruster was developed by an ESA team and built by SITAEL, a private company in Italy. The air particles bounce away from satellites normally, but the thruster collects them and gives them an electric charge, after which they are ejected to provide thrust that counteracts atmospheric drag.
