Lifeboat Foundation

A small satellite developed by MIT engineers has set a new record for data transmission between a satellite and Earth. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system used a laser to beam huge amounts of data at up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).

This data transmission speed is far greater than most connections you’ll get between the sky and the ground. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet offers up to 500 Mbps to Premium customers, and even the International Space Station’s data transmission tops out around 600 Mbps. That makes TBIRD up to 200 times faster.

The key difference is that most satellites communicate with ground stations via radio waves. TBIRD, on the other hand, uses laser light, which can carry up to 1,000 times more data in each transmission. Lasers come with their own hurdles though – the beams are much narrower, requiring more precise alignment between transmitter and receiver. And the light can be distorted by the atmosphere, leading to data loss. So TBIRD was designed to overcome these issues.

It will take 1.5 years to reach its final destination far beyond the moon.

In a world first, Japan’s space agency announced it successfully used steam to propel a spacecraft toward the Moon. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) water-powered CubeSat spacecraft, EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U (EQUULEUS), was launched on its way by NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which recently broke a record for the farthest distance traveled by a human-rated spacecraft.

“This is the world’s first successful orbit control beyond low-Earth orbit using water propellant propulsion system,” JAXA said in a statement on Saturday.

Continue reading “‘World’s first’ steam-propelled spacecraft heads to the moon and beyond” »

Plenty of potential solutions have been put forward to deal with the problem, but they all face a similar problem at the first step: how to track the debris they’re attempting to eliminate. Enter a new idea from researchers in Iran — using a novel type of radar to detect and track space debris before it becomes a danger.

The novel type of radar is called inverse synthetic aperture radar, or ISAR. As one might expect from the name, it’s the opposite of synthetic aperture radar (SAR). SAR has become much more prominent lately, especially by satellites attempting to collect data about the Earth, especially terrain data that might be useful for geospatial mapping.

Continue reading “A cutting-edge radar system could be a front-line tool to fight dangerous space junk” »

The agency’s sent a tiny lunar lander aboard NASA’s Artemis I moon mission.

Japan will have to wait a little longer to perform its historic first lunar landing. That’s because a tiny Japanese moon lander that hitched a ride aboard NASA’s Artemis I moon mission has failed to make it to the lunar surface, a report from Space.com reveals.

Officials working on the OMOTENASHI moon spacecraft announced on Twitter that they had failed to pick up the CubeSat’s signal ahead of a planned lunar landing attempt.

Continue reading “Japan’s space agency had to abandon a historic lunar landing attempt” »

SpaceX sent one of its first-stage boosters skyward for the 11th time on Tuesday evening. However, unlike its 10 previous flights, this time it didn’t return.

The mission launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 9:57 p.m. ET, lighting up the night sky as the Falcon 9 rocket roared toward space.

Thirty-five minutes after leaving the launchpad, the Falcon 9’s second stage deployed a communications satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit for French satellite operator Eutelsat.

A SpaceX recovery ship is headed more than a thousand kilometers downrange to support the second expendable Falcon 9 rocket launch in nine days.

No earlier than (NET) 9:57 pm EST (02:57 UTC) on Monday, November 21st, a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-40 pad carrying the Eutelsat 10B geostationary communications satellite. For unknown reasons, the French communications provider paid extra to get as much performance as possible out of Falcon 9, requiring SpaceX to expend the rocket’s booster instead of attempting to land and reuse it.

The mission will be Eutelsat’s third Falcon 9 launch in less than three weeks and will wrap up a trio of launch contracts the company secretly signed with SpaceX to move satellites off of competitor Ariane Group’s unavailable Ariane 5 and delayed Ariane 6 rockets. In a rare coincidence, Eutelsat 10B will also be SpaceX’s second expendable Falcon 9 launch in a row and the third Falcon launch to expend a booster this month. But like those two other missions, not all of the Falcon rocket tasked with launching Eutelsat 10B will be lost.

It’s all thanks to nanoclusters.

A new nanoscale 3D printing material developed by Stanford University engineers may provide superior structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronics.

A dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that has been 3D printed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology is stronger and more ductile than other cutting-edge additively manufactured materials. This discovery could lead to higher-performance components for use in aerospace, medicine, energy, and transportation.

Continue reading “A breakthrough 3D-printed material incredibly strong and ductile” »

It’s all thanks to nanoclusters.

A new nanoscale 3D printing material developed by Stanford University engineers may provide superior structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronicsAn improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.

According to the study led by Stanford University, a nanoscale 3D printing material, which creates structures that are a fraction of the width of a human hair, will enable to print of materials that are available for use, especially when printing at very small scales.

Continue reading “Engineers designed a new nanoscale 3D printing material that can be printed at a speed of 100 mm/s” »

The 693-square-foot array is designed to provide 5G broadband connectivity directly with cellular devices via 3GPP standard frequencies.

Bluewalker 3 satellite, a test satellite by Texas-based firm AST SpaceMobile deployed its largest commercial communications array ever flow in space, in low Earth orbit, the company announced on Monday. The satellite was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in September, Interesting Engineering.

Continue reading “A US company just deployed world’s largest communication satellite” »