When spacecraft re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, friction heats them up and creates a plasma sheath that stops communications – but SpaceX thinks its Starlink satellites could solve the problem.
By Mark Harris
Category: satellites – Page 23
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched NASA’s newest Earth-observation satellite, the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) mission.
The rocket lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, February 8, at 1:33 a.m. EST.
SpaceX launched an environmental research satellite for NASA early Thursday, a nearly $1 billion spacecraft that survived multiple cancellation threats and is now poised to shed new light on climate change and the complex interplay of heat-trapping carbon, aerosols and sea life on global scales.
The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission — PACE — “will dramatically advance our understanding of the relationship between aerosols and clouds, and the global energy balance,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth sciences division. “This is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in our ability to model the climate.”
She said PACE is “going to teach us about the oceans in the same way that Webb (the James Webb Space Telescope) is teaching us about the cosmos.” And that includes “a tremendous amount about ocean biology.”
New LISA satellite trio will be able to detect the forgotten ‘middle children’ of the black hole family.
BlackSky is close to completing its SMART satellite network which uses AI to revolutionize global monitoring and security with unprecedented efficiency.
BlackSky has won Phase III of IARPA’s SMART program to develop the U.S. agency’s AI-driven satellites for global monitoring.
WASHINGTON — Quindar has raised an additional $6 million to further development of software to automate operations of satellite constellations.
The company announced Jan. 30 that it closed $6 million in funding as an extension to a $2.5 million seed round it announced a year ago. Venture capital firm Fuse led the round with participation from existing investors Y Combinator and Founders Fund.
Quindar has developed software designed to automate satellite operations. The company says it has validated that system with an unnamed customer who is using it to manage a growing fleet of spacecraft.
Scientists studying sunspots have found important clues about magnetic features in their decay that will help understand the evolution and real origin of these mysterious magnetic phenomena. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Understanding sunspots is crucial to understanding the solar cycle, the approximately 11-year periodic change that changes the sun’s energy output and the frequency and intensity of flares it sends into space that can negatively influence satellites and electrical networks on Earth. (The solar “cycle” can range from eight to 14 years in length.)
Sunspots look rather simple from a distance but are complex areas where light from the sun is trapped by twisted magnetic fields. They are temporary regions of reduced temperature that appear as dark spots on the surface of the sun, where constricted magnetic flux suppresses convection that brings the inner heat of the sun to the surface. A sunspot is about the size of the Earth, and they often come in pairs.
BRUSSELS — Three of Europe’s biggest satellite fleet operators — SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat — explained why they are investing in the European Commission’s Iris2 multi-orbit satellite constellation, designed as a public-private partnership with the Commission and the 22-nation European Space Agency (ESA).
Three weeks before their SpaceRise consortium’s best-and-final bid is due, these companies said Iris2 gives them part ownership in a global medium-and low-Earth-orbit network whose capex is mainly government funded.
To view the entire article, become a subscriber!