Spacecraft and satellites could in future be launched into space without the need for fuel, thanks to a revolutionary new theory.
Dr Mike McCulloch, from the University of Plymouth, first put forward the idea of quantised inertia (QI) – through which he believes light can be converted into thrust – in 2007.
He has now received $1.3million from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a four-year study which aims to make the concept a reality.
(AP) — California Gov. Jerry Brown said Friday that the state plans to launch its “own damn satellite” into orbit to battle climate change.
The man the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko famously dubbed “Gov. Moonbeam” made the announcement at the conclusion of a two-day climate summit he organized in San Francisco.
Brown said state officials will work with the San Francisco-based company Planet Labs to develop a satellite to track climate-change causing pollutants. Brown said the earth-imaging company has launched 150 satellites.
Storms within a superstorm.
U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellites tracking Typhoon Ompong (international name Super Typhoon Mangkhut) have found powerful storms surrounding the eye of the tropical cyclone days before its landfall over northern Luzon.
On September 13, the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite looked at Ompong in infrared as it was approaching the Philippines, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Rob Gutro said in a blog post.
ICYMI overnight: A little more than an hour after its launch window opened—the delay was due to remnant thunderstorms in the area—#SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida early on Monday morning. The rocket’s first stage made a flawless flight, and then descended to a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean and safely landed.
The company has now flown 16 missions this year.
A Chinese remote sensing satellite has captured stunning footage of a suborbital rocket launch taking place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert.
The Jilin-1 satellite was orbiting at around 535 kilometres above the Earth as the OS-X1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan at 12:10 local time (04:10 UTC) on Friday.
The video satellite managed to capture the early moments of the 200-second flight, which reached an altitude of around 35 kilometers, showing the solid-fuelled rocket quickly climbing.
Space is all the rage, so it seems. The number of small spacecraft – including satellites – being manufactured has rocketed in recent years, and future forecasts are equally explosive. The first-ever internationally agreed requirements have just been published, enabling the industry to cruise even higher.
The small satellites industry is taking off. According to a recent report by SpaceWorks1), an aerospace company focused on delivering cutting-edge flight and space technologies, 2017 showed a 205 % increase in small satellite launches compared to 2016, with a record number still awaiting launch. What’s more, forecasts for future spacecraft production, often by new entrants to the industry, look equally celestial.
But producing these spacecraft involves some very specific requirements that newcomers to the market may not be aware of. To help harmonize the sector, ISO has just published the first-ever international technical specification for small spacecraft, which states the minimum requirements that every small spacecraft needs to comply with regardless of its mission.
Satellite Constellations to Bring Global Internet Coverage (SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing,…):
In this video, we’ll be discussing global internet connectivity initiatives based in space, more specifically – low and mid-Earth orbit through the use of satellite constellations.
[0:35–2:30] Starting off we’ll discuss how these satellites will communicate with the ground and the internet providing satellites from Iridium and ViaSat, that act as a proof of concept and validate satellites as a means for internet connectivity.
