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Category: satellites – Page 78

WASHINGTON – U.S. defense contractor CACI International is funding an experiment to demonstrate space technologies for military use, including an alternative to GPS navigation.

As part of the company’s plan to grow its space business, CACI is launching two demonstration payloads on a York Space satellite scheduled to fly to low Earth orbit in January aboard the SpaceX Transporter 7 rideshare.

“We’re looking at an alternative PNT [positioning, navigation and timing] solution that will work in a contested space domain,” CACI’s president and CEO John Mengucci said during a third-quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings call.

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A lesson from the Ukraine war is the resiliency provided by large proliferated constellations, said Gen. David Thompson.

WASHINGTON — During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing May 11, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Space Force officials if any lessons could be drawn from the war in Ukraine about the role of commercial satellites in armed conflicts.

One lesson is the resiliency provided by large proliferated constellations, said Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force.

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When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, 2022, it sent atmospheric shock waves, sonic booms, and tsunami waves around the world. Now, scientists are finding the volcano’s effects also reached space.

Analyzing data from NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission and ESA’s (the European Space Agency) Swarm satellites, scientists found that in the hours after the eruption, hurricane-speed winds and unusual electric currents formed in the —Earth’s electrified upper atmospheric layer at the edge of .

“The volcano created one of the largest disturbances in space we’ve seen in the modern era,” said Brian Harding, a physicist at University of California, Berkeley, and lead author on a new paper discussing the findings. “It is allowing us to test the poorly understood connection between the lower atmosphere and space.”

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Circa 2021

With SpaceX continuing the testing phase for Starship and enthusiasm spreading for an actual crewed flight to Mars, an interesting magnetic thrust rocket concept conceived by physicist Fatima Ebrahimi at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) might make the mission much more cost effective.

The feasibility of safe, sustainable propulsion systems that will outperform traditional chemical-based rocket engines on deep space voyages, not only in our own solar system but someday perhaps to a distant galaxy outside the Milky Way, is foremost on astrophysicists’ minds.

Ion thrusters, once the standard mode of acceleration for imaginative sci-fi authors and now the preferred positioning engine for NASA scientists and engineers in their satellites, might have greater endurance and are a lot cheaper to operate but generate a minuscule amount of thrust for acceleration purposes. This isn’t exactly a viable option for a trip to the Red Planet where hundreds of tons of spacecraft are being moved across the heavens.

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SpaceX has successfully launched and landed the same Falcon 9 booster twice in three weeks, smashing the current record for orbital-class rocket turnaround.

The existing record was also held by Falcon 9 and set in early 2021 when booster B1060 launched a Turkish communications satellite and a batch of Starlink spacecraft just 27 days and 4 hours apart. Now, just under 15 months later, a new Falcon 9 booster has decisively taken the crown.

At 5:27 pm EDT, Falcon 9 B1062 lifted off as planned from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) Launch Complex 40 pad. Flying for the sixth time, the reused booster carried an expendable Falcon upper stage, fairing, and a batch of 53 Starlink V1.5 satellites most of the way out of Earth’s atmosphere to a velocity of 2.2 kilometers per second (Mach ~6.5) before separating and landing on a SpaceX drone ship.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX has signed its first ever deal with a major U.S. airline to provide wireless internet to passengers for free using the Starlink satellite network.

The deal with Hawaiian Airlines, which could be implemented as soon as next year, is expected to increase pressure on rival airlines to provide free Wi-Fi for passengers.

“Hawaiian doesn’t currently offer inflight Wi-Fi and has an extensive network of flights over the Pacific Ocean, serving the mainland U.S., Japan, Australia and New Zealand, among other destinations, from Hawaii,” CNBC reported. “It plans to offer Starlink connectivity on its flights out of its home state to cities throughout the mainland U.S. and to its international destinations.”

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The official start of Atlantic Hurricane Season is less than six weeks away, and forecasters will be getting an essential upgrade just in time for the season to begin.

New technology from the University of Wisconsin will help with preparation of more detailed forecasts and provide more reliable information to meteorologists and emergency planners, which should ultimately result in better, safer outcomes for public safety.

The Advanced Dvorak Technique (ADT) is a satellite-based method for determining tropical cyclone intensity. Planned upgrades include the use of full-resolution images from weather satellites, better identification of the location of each storm’s eye and the ability to better analyze hurricanes occurring outside tropical regions.

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