Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON — Iridium Communications completed disposal of the last of its 65 working legacy satellites Dec. 28, while leaving open the possibility of paying an active-debris-removal company to deorbit 30 that failed in the decades since the operator deployed its first-generation constellation.

McLean, Virginia-based Iridium started deorbiting its first constellation, built by Motorola and Lockheed Martin, in 2017, as it replaced them with second-generation satellites from Thales Alenia Space.

Of the 95 satellites launched between 1997 and 2002, 30 malfunctioned and remain stuck in low Earth orbit, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

China launched its largest-ever rocket this week: The Long March-5 Y3 rocket took off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China’s Hainan Province, carrying a Shijian-20 satellite. The launch took place at 8:45 p.m. Beijing time on Friday night, as reported by China’s state news agency Xinhua. Just over half an hour later, the satellite achieved its planned orbit and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) declared the mission a success.

The rocket stands at 57 meters (187 feet) tall, and is 5 meters in diameter around its core stage, with four boosters each of which is 3.35 meters in diameter. This makes the Long March-5 the largest Chinese carrier rocket to date, with a total weight of 870 tonnes and producing thrust of over 1000 tonnes at takeoff.

The two-stage rocket can carry a payload of up to 25 tonnes into low Earth orbit. Alternatively, for more distant launches it can carry 14 tonnes into geostationary transfer orbit, which is an elliptical orbit that is used to reach the geosynchronous orbit which holds most satellites. Looking ahead to potential missions to the Moon and Mars, the rocket is also designed to carry up to eight tonnes into Earth-Moon transfer orbit, or up to five tones into Earth-Mars transfer orbit.

More than half a million pieces of man-made space junk are orbiting the Earth at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour. Even the tiniest pieces have the potential to destroy any of the 1,700 satellites circling the Earth.

Nuclear physicist Taylor Wilson joined the Air Force Space Command to see how a growing military and commercial space presence threatens the ubiquitous satellites, which are essential to humanity’s digital way of life.

Continue reading “Space Debris Is Now a Big Problem | VICE on HBO” »

The Guinness Book of World Records has awarded the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) the official record for the lowest altitude achieved by an Earth observation satellite. During its mission from December 23, 2017 to October 1, 2019, the Super Low Altitude Test Satellite (SLATS) “TSUBAME” reached a suitably super-low altitude of 167.4 km (104 mi).

Earth observation satellites are excellent platforms for learning more about our planet, but what makes them so effective is also one of their major disadvantages. Because they sit in low-Earth orbit at up to 2,000 km (1,200 mi), they can observe large areas of the Earth’s surface. Unfortunately, being at such an altitude means that the resolution of the images that can be captured is limited.

The TSUBAME mission was designed to test the feasibility of placing satellites in super-low altitudes between 200 and 300 km (120 and 190 mi), where they can capture high-resolution images. The problem is that the highly tenuous atmosphere at that altitude produces a thousand times more atmospheric drag than higher altitudes, and the atomic oxygen present can cause spacecraft to quickly deteriorate.

With two new satellites sent into space, China’s Beidou navigation system is one step closer to full deployment.

SpaceX is launching yet another rocket this evening — its 13th this year. This Falcon 9 launch is set for liftoff sometime during a window that’ll last for just over an hour, and that opens at 7:10 PM EST (4:10 PM PST) and extends to 8:38 PM EST (5:38 PM PST). The launch will use a first-stage rocket booster that previously flew in May and July of this year, and it’ll include an attempted landing of that booster, as well as a try at recovering both halves of the fairing used to protect the spacecraft’s cargo as it ascends to space.

The cargo itself is a satellite built by Boeing that hosts two payloads for different clients, including Japanese pay TV broadcast service provider SKY Perfect JSAT, and a high-speed broadband connectivity satellite developed by Kratos called Kacific1. The Falcon 9 spacecraft will be looking to deliver these to orbit around half-an-hour after liftoff.

It’s definitely going to be worth watching the secondary mission elements of this one, as SpaceX has so far succeeded only in recovering one half of a fairing used during a mission with a single barge stationed in the ocean. This will see it try to catch both pieces, using two ships named “Ms. Tree” and “Ms. Chief” that have been retrofitted with a large net assembly specifically for the purpose.

A compact exoplanet observatory built in Europe to help astronomers determine the sizes of distant worlds around other stars is scheduled for launch Tuesday from French Guiana aboard a Soyuz rocket.

Designed to build upon discoveries made by previous pioneering exoplanet telescopes — like NASA’s Kepler mission — the European Space Agency’s Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite, or CHEOPS, mission will orbit some 435 miles (700 kilometers) above Earth with a small but ultra-sensitive telescope looking at faraway stars.

CHEOPS will be capable of registering tiny changes in the brightness of stars as planets block their light from reaching the telescope. This way of observing exoplanets is called the transit method, and it’s been used by Kepler, NASA’s TESS observatory, and the French space agency’s CoRoT mission to discover planets around other stars.

You can see plastic waste in our oceans from space 😳

Via NowThis

The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching the first mission to remove a piece of space debris, set for 2025. The ClearSpace-1 mission will collect a piece of the Vespa (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter) second stage which was left by an ESA mission in 2013, which weighs approximately 100 grams and is the size of a small satellite.

The ESA selected a Swiss startup called ClearSpace to lead the mission. “This is the right time for such a mission,” Luc Piguet, founder and CEO of ClearSpace, said in a statement. “The space debris issue is more pressing than ever before. Today we have nearly 2000 live satellites in space and more than 3000 failed ones. And in the coming years, the number of satellites will increase by an order of magnitude, with multiple mega-constellations made up of hundreds or even thousands of satellites planned for low Earth orbit to deliver wide-coverage, low-latency telecommunications and monitoring services. The need is clear for a ‘tow truck’ to remove failed satellites from this highly trafficked region.”

The problem of space debris is becoming increasingly urgent, with more and more potentially hazardous objects in orbit around the planet, some at extremely high speeds. Debris can pose a risk to manned missions and the International Space Station as well as satellites and other unmanned missions.