Lifeboat Foundation

UK company ODIN Space has demonstrated a space junk sensor, which could map and analyse debris with sub-centimetre precision.

SpaceX recently launched a Falcon 9 rocket delivering the Transporter 8 mission, a rideshare carrying various microsatellites and nanosatellites into orbit for commercial and government customers. These payloads included new sensor technology by ODIN Space, installed on a D-Orbit ION satellite. ODIN Space has now confirmed that the spacecraft has successfully begun to capture data from its surroundings.

A new navigation system that tracks subatomic particles constantly bombarding Earth could help us get around indoors, underground, and underwater — all the places GPS fails.

The challenge: GPS (the Global Positioning System) is a group of 31 satellites, constantly transmitting radio signals from about 12,500 miles above Earth’s surface. Receivers in phones, cars, planes, and ships then use data from multiple satellites’ signals to calculate their own locations on Earth.

While GPS has revolutionized surface transportation, satellite signals can reflect off solid surfaces, making the navigation system incapable of accurately pinpointing the locations of receivers indoors, underground, and underwater.

NASA

This advancement is made possible through lasers acting as data carriers, offering a much wider spectrum than traditional microwave technology. The deployment of this cutting-edge technology is expected to revolutionize ground communication with satellites.

SpaceX has announced a plan to give T-Mobile customers direct access to the Starlink satellite constellation, ensuring they’ll have mobile coverage nearly everywhere in the US.

“I think this is really a massive game changer,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk during a live event at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas. “In a nutshell, it’s no more dead zones.”

The challenge: Cell coverage is widespread in the US, but there are still more than half a million square miles — nearly twice the size of Texas — where you won’t find a signal from any carrier.

Year 2015 😗😁

Physicists in France have figured out how to optimise an advanced type of electric rocket thruster that uses a stream of plasma travelling at 72,420 km/h (45,000 mph) to propel spacecraft forward, allowing them to run on 100 million times less fuel than conventional chemical rockets.

Known as a Hall thruster, these engines have been operating in space since 1971, and are now routinely flown on communication satellites and space probes to adjust their orbits when needed. These things are awesome, and scientists want to use them to get humans to Mars, except there’s one — rather large — problem: the current lifespan of a Hall thruster is around 10,000 operation hours, and that’s way too short for most space exploration missions, which require upwards of 50,000 hours.

Continue reading “This Plasma Engine Could Get Humans to Mars on 100 Million Times Less Fuel” »

Previous competitions have involved satellites that weren’t in orbit, but this is the real deal.

Satellite-to-phone connectivity provider Lynk has made its debut in Palau, where the nation’s hundreds of islands make traditional cell coverage difficult to achieve. The company’s “cell towers in space” now cover the entire country — intermittently, but that’s a lot better than nothing, and service will improve as more satellites are added to the constellation.

Lynk is among the first of a new wave of direct satellite-to-phone providers, replacing the bulky, dedicated satphones of yore by connecting ordinary mobile devices to low Earth orbit. It’s difficult to engineer for many reasons, as you can imagine.

Apple’s SOS has the most high-profile use case, with the distinguishing characteristic of having to actually point your phone at an unseen satellite, but Lynk’s service requires no special behavior by the user — it just works like a roving cell tower, connecting when it passes overhead.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation continues to deliver stunning download speeds in Germany. The network, comprised of thousands of satellites, became well known all over for its remarkable download speeds soon after it was opened for public participation. However, the hype around Starlink, the world’s first commercially successful low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet, led to millions of users signing up for SpaceX’s service — faster than SpaceX could add capacity. This led to performance downgrades across areas of high demand, particularly in several regions of America. However, now and then, Starlink reminds everyone of its true potential, and that’s the case with today’s internet tests.

Starlink Crosses 500 Mbps In Multiple Download Speed Tests

Today’s test comes courtesy of a Reddit user who recently received their Starlink user terminal after moving to rural Germany. Starlink tests in the European country have often produced remarkable results, owning partly due to lesser congestion as well as the placement of satellites. SpaceX is gradually building out its constellation, which eventually aims to be made of thousands of satellites. This leads to unevenly spread out satellites that benefit some areas in the form of higher speeds.

WASHINGTON — Satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital has signed an agreement with French aerospace giant Safran to explore U.S.-based production of satellite propulsion systems, the companies announced June 23.

Under the agreement, Safran Electronics & Defense and Terran Orbital will investigate opportunities and prerequisites for the production of electric propulsion systems for satellites based on Safran’s PPSX00 plasma thruster.

The PPSX00 is a hall effect plasma thruster, recently introduced by Safran for the low Earth orbit satellite market.