Lifeboat Foundation

A number of military leaders around the world have expressed concerns to US officials over the dominance and control of SpaceX founder Elon Musk over satellite internet, according to a new report.

Over the past decade Musk’s SpaceX has changed the launch industry with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The company has pressed this advantage to establish itself as the leading player in satellite internet through Starlink.

Update: The story has been updated to include comments from Capella Space CEO Payam Banazadeh and Phase Four. Paragraph five and six have been updated with additional context on solar flair activity and premature satellite reentry, and paragraph eleven contains additional information on Phase Four technology.

Capella Space’s synthetic aperture radar satellites are falling back to Earth much sooner than the three years they were anticipated to operate, according to publicly available satellite data.

The startup has launched a total of ten small satellites to low Earth orbit since 2018, including eight in its family of “Whitney”-class spacecraft. Five of these satellites have reentered the atmosphere since the end of January of this year, including three of the Whitneys. Those Whitney sats were in orbit for less than two-and-a-half years; one, Capella-5, was in orbit for less than two years.

Euclid, a space mission led by the European Space Agency.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the exploration and study of space. ESA was established in 1975 and has 22 member states, with its headquarters located in Paris, France. ESA is responsible for the development and coordination of Europe’s space activities, including the design, construction, and launch of spacecraft and satellites for scientific research and Earth observation. Some of ESA’s flagship missions have included the Rosetta mission to study a comet, the Gaia mission to create a 3D map of the Milky Way, and the ExoMars mission to search for evidence of past or present life on Mars.

A new space weather sensor is heading to the International Space Station to help scientists understand how the sun’s outbursts alter Earth’s upper atmosphere.

The sensor’s data will help space weather forecasters predict how sudden eruptions of radiation and plasma from the star at the center of our solar system disrupt satellite communication links and affect signals from navigational satellites such as Europe’s Galileo.

Breaking into the 31st week of 2023, from July 31 to Aug. 6, not much is held in store in terms of launches. Up first this week — following an aborted launch attempt last week — Rocket Lab will launch Capella Space’s Acadia satellite to a mid-inclination low-earth orbit. Later, a momentous flight will take place, when the last Antares 230+ will fly to low-Earth orbit (LEO) during the NG-19 resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Following slightly more than a day later, a Chang Zheng 4C carrying the Fengyun-3F meteorological satellite will take to the skies from Jiuquan, China. Shortly after that, it will be the turn of a Falcon 9 transporting Maxar-built Galaxy 37 inside its fairing. It will be deployed into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), with the satellite reaching a geostationary orbit (GEO) by itself.

Continue reading “Launch Roundup: SpaceX to launch Galaxy 37; China to launch FY-3F” »

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully placed the commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit, adding 500 gigabits per second capacity to the network’s services.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully placed in geosynchronous orbit the world’s heaviest commercial communications satellite, Jupiter-3, Space News.

SpaceX

Continue reading “Jupiter-3: World’s heaviest communication satellite is now in orbit” »

SpaceX launched the world’s heaviest commercial communications satellite atop a Falcon Heavy rocket on Friday. The triple-core rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A with the Jupiter 3/EchoStar 24 satellite at 11:04 p.m. EDT (0304 UTC Saturday).

The successful launch came after a scrub on Wednesday and a 48-hour delay to replace a stuck liquid oxygen valve on the rocket’s port-side booster. After a week of stormy conditions on the Florida Space Coast the weather improved and the rocket lifted off in calm conditions, with just a thin layer of cloud in the sky.

It was the seventh mission for the Falcon Heavy and the third flight of the rocket this year. The Falcon Heavy’s twin side boosters, which have made two previous flights, returned to SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 & 2 punching through a thin layer of cloud and announcing their arrival with sonic booms. The rocket’s core stage required all its capacity to loft the giant satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit and was not recovered.

The day before, SpaceX was still able to send the Jupiter-3 satellite into space using a Falcon Heavy rocket. A few days earlier, the launch was cancelled for unknown reasons when the countdown stopped at the 65-second mark.

Here’s What We Know

Falcon Heavy failed to set a world record for payload mass. The minibus-sized Jupiter 3 weighs more than 9,000kg, and Hughes Network Systems calls it the world’s largest commercial communications satellite. But the record belongs to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket, which sent two satellites into orbit weighing a combined 10.2 tonnes. This happened two years ago.

Making only its seventh flight, the triple-core Falcon Heavy put on a spectacular overnight show with dramatic side-by-side booster landings.