Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office launched their newest space observation satellites today in a largely classified mission called “Silent Barker.”

The joint mission flew Sept. 10 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida. Once operational, the satellites will track objects — and potentially nefarious activities — within geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles above Earth.

“Working together, we’ve developed a system in a relatively short amount of time that is going to provide us with unprecedented coverage of what’s going on in the GEO belts,” NRO director Christopher Scolese told reporters during an Aug. 28 pre-launch briefing.

On Sept. 6, a new satellite left Earth; its mission is to tell us about the motions of hot plasma flows in the universe.

Launched from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite will detect X-ray wavelengths with unprecedented precision to peer into the hearts of galaxy clusters, reveal the workings of black holes and supernovae, as well as to tell us about the elemental makeup of the universe.

XRISM, pronounced “crism,” is a collaborative mission between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA, with participation by the European Space Agency.

The satellite, dubbed ADRAS-J, was unveiled by Tokyo-based venture Astroscale Japan Inc., which is developing technology to remove space debris including the remains of satellites and rockets that have reached the end of their operational lives.

The satellite is 80 centimeters in length and width, 1.2 meters high and weighs about 150 kilograms. It is scheduled to be launched by a commercial rocket from New Zealand by the end of this fiscal year. The satellite aims to come within a few to several… More.

TOKYO — A demonstration satellite scheduled to be launched within fiscal 2023 that aims to approach space debris, apparently in the first attempt of its kind in the world, was shown to the press on Sept. 7.

Appearing as a weird line of moving dots, SpaceX satellites can be seen training across the night sky and are often confused for UFOs.

New details of Musk’s involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war revealed in his biography.

Elon Musk holds many titles. He is the CEO of Tesla SpaceX and owns the social media company X, which was recently rebranded from Twitter. Going by an excerpt of his biography, published in the Washington Post.

According to the excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s book, Musk disabled his company Starlink’s satellite communication networks, which were being used by the Ukrainian military to attack the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea, sneakily. The Ukrainian army was using Starlink as a guide to target Russian ships and attack them with six small… More.

Continue reading “Did Elon Musk prevent a Russia-Ukraine nuclear war?” »

Today’s Image of the Day from European Space Agency features the first image of the full Earth disc from the Meteosat Third Generation Imager.

This is the first of a new generation of satellites that is expected to revolutionize weather forecasting by enabling more precise monitoring of our changing atmosphere, land and oceans.

Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, said that the image is a great example of what European cooperation in space can achieve.

Elon Musk’s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX has completed 60 launches this year, much to the CEO’s excitement.

What Happened: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched 22 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Florida on Thursday at about 10:21 p.m. ET, marking the company’s 60th launch this year.

“Congrats to the SpaceX team on launch 60 of 2023!” Musk wrote.

For the first time in my timezone, SpaceX completed 9 launches in a month. Previously, if you were based in Europe, you saw 9 launches in a month a few months ago. At 9 launches/month that is a current rate of 108 launches/year, making SpaceX’s goal of 100 launches this year a possibility.

They had a lot of trouble getting this flight off today as a recent hurricane is still affecting the weather some. They got around this by having a 5 and a half hour launch window so they just waited a few hours until the weather was clear for several minutes and they launched!

Continue reading “SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Starlink 6-13 Mission” »

Metrological institutions around the world administer our time using atomic clocks based on the natural oscillations of atoms. These clocks, pivotal for applications like satellite navigation or data transfer, have recently been improved by using ever higher oscillation frequencies in optical atomic clocks.

Now, scientists at the University of Innsbruck and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences led by Christian Roos show how a particular way of creating entanglement can be used to further improve the accuracy of measurements integral to an optical atomic clock’s function. Their results have been published in the journal Nature.

Observations of quantum systems are always subject to a certain statistical uncertainty. “This is due to the nature of the quantum world,” explains Johannes Franke from Christian Roos’ team. “Entanglement can help us reduce these errors.”