Adding another dimension to the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk rivalry.
Amazon will launch the first two of its Project Kuiper internet satellites in the fourth quarter of 2,022 in a bid to tap the market for internet satellite constellations, a press statement from the delivery giant reveals.
Amazon announced Project Kuiper last week, alongside a partnership with Verizon, which will provide its telecommunications expertise. The two firms are following in the footsteps of SpaceX’… See more.
But in recent years the government has signaled its intent to open up the sector to private players and last year passed a series of reforms designed to foster innovation and encourage new start ups. Earlier this month Prime Minister Narendra Modi also launched the Indian Space Association, an industry body designed to foster collaboration between public and private players.
One of the companies that has been quick to pounce on these new opportunities is Agnikul, which is being incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai. This February, the company successfully test fired its 3D-printed Agnilet rocket engine, just four years after its founding.
While other private space companies like Relativity Space and Rocket Lab also use 3D printing to build their rockets, Agnikul is the first to print an entire rocket engine as a single piece. IEEE Spectrum spoke to co-founder and chief operating officer Moin SPM to find out why the company thinks this gives them an edge in the burgeoning “launch on-demand” market for small satellites. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When it launches in 2,022 the GOES-T satellite will watch over Earth and give us early warning of natural disasters. But preparing it is an epic task for Lockheed Martin.
NASA Once Again Chooses SpaceX For New Mission GOES-U: GOES-U will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s weather, oceans, and environment, as well as real–time mapping of total lightning activity and improved monitoring of solar activity and space weather.
These satellites will be used by NOAA to forecast potentially hazardous weather and regularly monitor the weather. The weather of a particular region can be seen through the GOES-R series of satellites.
On the website, it says, “The GOES-R Series provides advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s weather, oceans and environment, real-time mapping of total lightning activity, and improved monitoring of solar activity and space weather.”
DUBAI, U.A.E. — SpaceX has won a contract to launch an Emirati high-resolution imaging satellite on a Falcon 9 rideshare mission in 2023.
The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) announced at an Oct. 27 press conference here, held during the 72nd International Astronautical Congress, that it selected SpaceX to launch its MBZ SAT satellite in the second half 2023. The center did not disclose the value of the contract.
Salem AlMarri, deputy director general of MBRSC, said the center looked at several launch providers for the mission. “At the end of the day, we look, for each mission, what is best. For this mission, SpaceX was the best.”
Don’t let the titanium metal walls or the sapphire windows fool you. It’s what’s on the inside of this small, curious device that could someday kick off a new era of navigation.
For over a year, the avocado-sized vacuum chamber has contained a cloud of atoms at the right conditions for precise navigational measurements. It is the first device that is small, energy-efficient and reliable enough to potentially move quantum sensors—sensors that use quantum mechanics to outperform conventional technologies—from the lab into commercial use, said Sandia National Laboratories scientist Peter Schwindt.
Sandia developed the chamber as a core technology for future navigation systems that don’t rely on GPS satellites, he said. It was described earlier this year in the journal AVS Quantum Science.
GOHEUNG, South Korea — South Korea failed to deliver a satellite into orbit on Thursday, crushing its dream to become the 10th country in the world to reach the milestone using its own technology.
President Moon Jae-in said that the three-stage Nuri rocket could not reach orbit, although it flew as high as 700 km into space after all its three stages separated successfully.
“I am sorry that we could not reach the goal completely, but it’s still a very excellent accomplishment,” Moon said after the launch at the Naro Space Center on South Korea’s southernmost island of Oenarodo. “We have an uncompleted mission to deliver a dummy satellite into orbit safely.”
NASA has a launch date for that most Hollywood of missions, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which is basically a dry run of the movie “Armageddon.” Unlike the film, this will not involve nukes, oil rigs or Aerosmith, but instead is a practical test of our ability to change the trajectory of an asteroid in a significant and predictable way.
The DART mission, managed by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (!), involves sending a pair of satellites out to a relatively nearby pair of asteroids, known as the Didymos binary. It’s one large-ish asteroid, approximately 780 meters across — that’s Didymos proper — and a 160-meter “moonlet” in its orbit.
As the moonlet is more typical of the type likely to threaten Earth — there being more asteroids that are that size and not easily observed — we will be testing the possibility of intercepting one by smashing into it at nearly 15,000 miles per hour. This will change the speed of the moonlet by a mere fraction of a percent, but enough that its orbit period will be affected measurably. Knowing exactly how much will help us plan any future asteroid-deflection missions — not surprisingly, there isn’t a lot of existing science on ramming your spacecraft into space rocks.
