Archive for the ‘satellites’ category: Page 166
Mar 14, 2017
Light wars: space-based lasers among Beijing’s hi-tech arms
Posted by Carse Peel in categories: military, satellites
Arsenal including electromagnetic railguns and microwave weapons aims to neutralize web of satellites that give US its main strategic edge.
Mar 12, 2017
Recycling Space Junk for a LunarBase
Posted by Brett Gallie II in categories: robotics/AI, satellites, sustainability
It costs $80k to send a Nano- Satellite into space! To send the materials to build a lunar base is going to be expensive!
This week it was announced that NASA found a forgotten satellite in Lunar Orbit, which got me thinking about an idea to recycle existing Space Junk in the construction of an International Lunar Base with cost savings. We could use a modified version of my Google Deepmind NEO tracker to source the Space Junk and the ideas listed below to capture and redirect the Space Junk.
Mar 9, 2017
Massive commercial space push and a variety of new robotic capabilities could self supporting and rapidly growing space economy
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: economics, robotics/AI, satellites
Several companies will collectively be launching about 20,000 satellites over the next few years. SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat, O3b Networks and Theia Holdings — all told the FCC they have plans to field constellations of V-band satellites in non-geosynchronous orbits to provide communications services in the United States and elsewhere. So far the V-band spectrum of interest, which sits directly above Ka-band from about 37 GHz to the low 50 GHz range, has not been heavily employed for commercial communications services.
* SpaceX, for example, proposes a “VLEO,” or V-band low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of 7,518 satellites to follow the operator’s initially proposed 4,425 satellites that would function in Ka- and Ku-band.
Mar 5, 2017
Earth’s Orbiting Junkyard Threatens the Space Economy
Posted by Brett Gallie II in categories: economics, satellites
Rocket and satellite litter is endangering private space commerce. Enter the cosmic debris tracking industry.
Mar 3, 2017
Researchers remotely control sequence in which 2-D sheets fold into 3D structures
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, nanotechnology, satellites, solar power, sustainability
Inspired by origami, North Carolina State University researchers have found a way to remotely control the order in which a two-dimensional (2-D) sheet folds itself into a three-dimensional (3D) structure.
“A longstanding challenge in the field has been finding a way to control the sequence in which a 2-D sheet will fold itself into a 3D object,” says Michael Dickey, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-corresponding author of a paper describing the work. “And as anyone who has done origami — or folded their laundry—can tell you, the order in which you make the folds can be extremely important.”
Mar 3, 2017
Richard Branson starting a new venture dedicated to launching small satellites into space
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: satellites
Once focused primarily on flying tourists into space, Virgin senses an opportunity as the size and cost of satellites have been greatly reduced.
Feb 26, 2017
Nano-Satellites Getting Closer to Take-Off
Posted by Karen Hurst in category: satellites
This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)
Enhancing situational awareness is a vital mission also in space. The US Department of Defense’s Strategic Command Joint Space Operations Center got Sky and Space’s signature on an agreement ahead of the company’s planned launch of 200 nano-satellites into space, as space junk continues to be a big issue.
The agreement provides for Sky and Space to receive “space situational awareness services” from the US Department of Defence so the company’s nano-satellites will be able to avoid objects like space junk and other satellites.
Feb 26, 2017
The ‘Celestial Empire’ Looks to Space
Posted by Andreas Matt in categories: futurism, satellites
China’s State Council, the country’s chief administrative authority, recently published a White Paper on its space policies. It not only lifted a veil of secrecy that shielded Beijing’s space policies, but also outlined the country’s recent achievements and offered a five-year outlook on future activities.
Since its first satellite launch in 1970, China has become a major player in the space domain. However, it was only in 2003 that China became the third country to independently send people into space.
Beijing has placed significant resources into narrowing the capability gap that has separated it from other leading nations in this area. It took only eight years from its entry into manned spaceflight, in 2003, to the launch of the first prototype component of its space station, the Tiangong-1.
Feb 25, 2017
Computing with biochemical circuits made easy
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, computing, satellites
Electronic circuits are found in almost everything from smartphones to spacecraft and are useful in a variety of computational problems from simple addition to determining the trajectories of interplanetary satellites. At Caltech, a group of researchers led by Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Lulu Qian is working to create circuits using not the usual silicon transistors but strands of DNA.
The Qian group has made the technology of DNA circuits accessible to even novice researchers—including undergraduate students—using a software tool they developed called the Seesaw Compiler. Now, they have experimentally demonstrated that the tool can be used to quickly design DNA circuits that can then be built out of cheap “unpurified” DNA strands, following a systematic wet-lab procedure devised by Qian and colleagues.
A paper describing the work appears in the February 23 issue of Nature Communications.