The thousands of defunct satellites and tons of orbiting space debris necessitate a low-Earth orbit cleanup starting this decade.
Category: satellites – Page 83
The heat from Starlink’s receiver dishes is helping felines and other small animals stay warm through the cold winters.
Starlink is an important project of SpaceX and Elon Musk to provide high-speed satellite Internet to mankind. Although it is not yet clear how we humans will benefit, this project is definitely being extremely popular with cats, at least for the time being. The reason is because Starlink’s receiver dishes are becoming the ideal place for cats to rest and warm up in the cold winter.
Specifically, on a Twitter post on New Year’s Eve, one user named Aaron Taylor captured an image of 5 cats cuddled up on one of Starlink satellite dishes. Meanwhile, though the outdoor temperature seemed quite low and the ground was still covered with snow, the heat emitted from the receiver dishes appeared to be enough to warm the kittens, making them continue to lie there.
The Future Of Space Tech & Innovation — Dr. Joel Mozer Ph.D., Director of Science, Technology & Research, United States Space Force.
Dr. Joel Mozer is the Director of Science, Technology, and Research, United States Space Force (https://www.spaceforce.mil/).
With a PhD in Physics, and MS in Atmospheric Science, from University of Arizona, Dr. Mozer serves as the principal scientific advisor to the Commander and is the senior authority for all science and technology matters for an organization of approximately 11,000 space professionals worldwide, and manages a global network of satellite command and control, communications, missile warning and launch facilities. In this role, he interacts with other principals, operational commanders, combatant commands, acquisition, and international communities to address cross-organizational science and technical issues and solutions.
Dr. Mozer represents USSF science and technology on decisions, high-level planning, and policy, building coalitions and alliances throughout the U.S. government, industry, academia, the international community, and other scientific and technology organizations.
Dr. Mozer entered government service in 1992 with the U.S. Air Force. Prior to his current assignment, he was Chief Space Experimentalist of the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicle Directorate. In that role, he was responsible for managing AFRL’s $40 million-per-year investment in research and development related to the development of experimental satellites and payloads and conducted a team of 100 engineers and scientists at Kirtland and Holloman Air Force Bases, New Mexico — all working to develop cost-effective ways to assemble, integrate, test and fly novel spacecraft and systems and demonstrating new concepts for Department of Defense systems and missions. His area of specialization relates to space control and remote sensing — understanding the natural and man-made space environment and developing forecast tools for warfighters, theater battle commanders and other decision-makers to mitigate risks.
Koalas are now endangered
Posted in government, habitats, satellites
When the koala fur trade began during the late 19th century, as many as 10 million koalas are thought to have existed in Australia. Since then, they have declined to a fraction of their historic range and numbers. Between 2000 and 2016, the states of Queensland and New South Wales bulldozed at least 885,000 hectares of forest and bushland that provided habitat for koalas, based on analyses of vegetation loss derived from satellite imagery.
Having previously classified the animal as “Least Concern” on its Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) uplisted the koala to “Vulnerable” in 2016. A report by the WWF in 2017 found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland and a 26% decline in New South Wales.
Estimates of their exact numbers vary considerably, but the Australian government has just published a new detailed analysis, showing the rapid and ongoing decline of koala populations in Eastern Australia. Following the disastrous wildfires of 2019–2020, they have now dipped below 100,000 to approximately 92,000 and are projected to fall by another third in this region during the next decade, possibly reaching 63,000 by 2032.
Ooooops!!
A rocket stage set to smash into the moon on March 4 is no longer believed to be a piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but rather a booster from a Chinese rocket sent to the moon in 2014, experts say.
Bill Gray, an astronomer and the developer of the asteroid tracking software Project Pluto, initially identified the errant space junk (which had been given the temporary name WE0913A) as the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, predicting that the debris would collide with the moon after hurtling through space for seven years.
Gray now believes his initial assessment was wrong, and he has updated his blog post with a correction. The doomed object isn’t the SpaceX upper stage — launched in February 2015 to send the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, or DSCOVR, 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth — but is actually a rocket booster from China’s 2014 Chang’e 5-T1 mission, which launched on October 2014, he said.
The object is set to hit the moon traveling at roughly 5,771 mph (9,288 km/h) on March 4.
The Sun’s solar activity cycle moves into high gear and knocks down 40 Starlink satellites. Peak is 2025. How many more could be impacted?
Increasing solar activity could play havoc with mega-constellations like Starlink in the coming years.
A powerful magnetic storm takes out most of a batch of Starlink satellites the day after launch.
Elon Musk’s company launched a Falcon 9 rocket bearing the 49 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 3), but a geomagnetic storm that struck a day later sent the satellites plummeting back toward Earth, where they will burn up in the atmosphere.
“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Preliminary analysis show[s] the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode to begin orbit-raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere.”
The satellites were hit by the storm just one day after launch.[/s].
