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Category: satellites – Page 209

DARPA Seeking Private Partners for In-Orbit Servicing Program

Looking for partners.

[Via Satellite 03-28-2016] The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is reviving its in-orbit servicing efforts through a new public-private partnership program called Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS). Under the RSGS vision, the partners would join a DARPA-developed modular toolkit, including hardware and software, to a privately developed spacecraft to create a commercially owned and operated Robotic Servicing Vehicle (RSV). DARPA would contribute the robotics technology, such as the previously developed Front End Robotic Enabling Near-Term Demonstration (FREND) robotic arm, expertise, and a government-provided launch. The commercial partner would contribute the satellite to carry the robotic payload, integration of the payload, and the mission operations center and staff.

DARPA seeks to develop and demonstrate the RSV on orbit within the next five years. The agency’s goals include demonstrating safe, reliable, useful and efficient operations in or near Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), demonstrating on live GEO satellites in collaboration with commercial and U.S. government spacecraft operators, and supporting the development of a servicer spacecraft with sufficient propellant and payload robustness to enable dozens of missions over several years.

DARPA plans to kick off the public-private partnership via a program solicitation in the near future. Shortly thereafter, DARPA will host a proposers day to provide potential partners with further details about the RSGS program. The agency plans to share the solicitation along with the date and location of the proposers day on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website in the future.

Space Innovation Congress

The is a Space Technology Conference and Exhibition, taking place in London on 7–8 April 2016. It is set to showcase the most cutting edge technologies and uses of Space Technology providing insight from over 50 speakers sharing their unparalleled industry knowledge and real-life experiences.

This year’s Space Innovation Congress will be highlighting the most innovative advancements in Space technology and will look at how these are being applied to many industry verticals from farming to banking, and the practical case studies that are coming out of these projects.

With user cases with dedicated tracks covering the entire Space exploration and Earth observation ecosystems: Satellites, Big data, Crop monitoring, Space debris, Maritime surveillance, Space weather and its impact on banking systems, Biomedical, Commercial space collaboration and Telecoms.

China to conduct more than 20 satellite launches in 2016

(File photo)

The year 2016 is a big year for China’s aerospace industry, as several rockets will be sent into space, including Tiangong-2, an orbiting space lab and Shenzhou-11, a manned spacecraft with two people on board.

Two new types of rockets will be launched in 2016. Long March-7, scheduled to be launched in June, will put the country’s first cargo ship, Tianzhou-1, into space in the first half of 2017 to dock with Tiangong-2 and conduct experiments.

Can SkyFi Really Give the Entire World Free Internet?

Wifi distribution across this planet is patchwork of crazy: You can tweet from Mt. Fuji but lord help you if you want to send an email in Cuba. Thursday, Israeli company SkyFi announced it will be the one to finally soak the world in wifi from space.

In a press release announcing $3 million in funding from Jerusalem Venture Partners and the Liberty Israel Venture Fund, the company said it would get around the problems preventing reliable wifi from traditional satellites by launching nano satellites whose 55-centimeter diameter antenna could be folded up to make launching cheaper, then expanding once in orbit.

“The high flexibility of our nano satellites and the ability to provide multiple services to different customers enables us to offer free internet access to the whole planet in the same manner as GPS services are free. We think this has the potential to bridge great divides and give everyone worldwide a part in the great global connected community,” Raz Itzhaki Tamir, Co-Founder and CEO of SkyFi, said in the press announcement.

Israel startup SkyFi gets $3M to spread internet globally

“We think the only way to effectively connect people all over the world is through satellites.”

Israel-Flag-Small Gedalyah Reback 23 hours ago.

There’s been much ado about getting internet to the world’s disaffected and disconnected populations. Large swathes of rural and underdeveloped areas of Asia, Africa and somewhat in Latin America have garnered the attention of Silicon Valley’s biggest superpowers Google and Facebook.

Can a tree grow in space?

Satellites and spacecraft are generally complex to build on the ground, expensive to launch and obsolete in a decade or less.

These objects end up floating in orbit around the planet contributing to the pollution surrounding the Earth. But what if there was an alternative?

That’s the question David Barnhart, director of USC’s Space Engineering Research Center and lead for the Space Systems and Technology group for the USC Information Sciences Institute, is contemplating. What if we could just “grow” spacecraft, repurpose a hybrid of inorganic and organic materials and even allow food to grow in space?

DigitalGlobe Partners with TAQNIA and KACST to Develop Constellation of Small Imaging Satellites

TAQNIA and KACST signed an agreement on February 21, 2016, to form a joint venture that will be responsible for developing six or more sub-meter resolution imaging satellites.

KACST will construct, integrate, and launch the satellites, and it will own 50% of the satellites’ imaging capacity inside of KACST’s communication cone, which includes Saudi Arabia and the surrounding region. And, DigitalGlobe will have rights to the other 50% of the capacity inside this region and 100% of the satellites’ capacity outside of the region.

WESTMINSTER, Colo.–()– DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI), the global leader in earth imagery and information about our changing planet, today announced the formation of a joint venture with TAQNIA, a firm dedicated to accelerating technology development for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in partnership with KACST to develop a constellation of highly capable small imaging satellites to support the needs of customers around the world.

DigitalGlobe and TAQNIA and KACST signed an agreement on February 21, 2016, to form a joint venture that will be responsible for developing six or more sub-meter resolution imaging satellites. The small satellites are expected to be capable of collecting imagery with anticipated 80 cm resolution and will leverage DigitalGlobe’s industry-leading ground infrastructure. TAQNIA and KACST will benefit from DigitalGlobe’s imagery production platform and expertise and massive catalog of high-resolution, high-accuracy imagery, which will improve the native accuracy of the small satellite imagery. TAQNIA and KACST will also benefit from DigitalGlobe’s global distribution capability and existing customer relationships with the world’s largest buyers of commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information.

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