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SpaceX won a $2 million contract from the SpEC consortium to study ways to provide weather data to the U.S. Space Force.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX is looking at ways it could provide weather data to the U.S. military. The company is working under a $2 million six-month study contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center.

Charlotte Gerhart, chief of the Space and Missile Systems Center Production Corps Low Earth Orbit Division, said in a statement to SpaceNews that SpaceX received the contract in July from SMC’s Space Enterprise Consortium.

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The Finnish space start-up #ICEYE released its rapidly growing archive of tens of thousands of radar satellite images to the public, the company announced in Helsinki today.

The ICEYE archive includes nearly 18,000 #radar images in various modes taken with ICEYE’s SAR satellite constellation between mid-2019 and now, the company said. The images are released for non-commercial use.

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Astroscale raised an additional funding of $51 million from a group of investors, bringing the total capital raised to $191 million, the Japanese orbital debris removal company said today.
This latest round makes Astroscale the most funded on-orbit services and logistics company globally and most funded space venture in Japan, the Tokyo-based company said.

The investment raised since its founding in 2013 has allowed Astroscale to establish a global footprint across five countries and grow to over 140 team members, Astroscale said. “Each of the five global offices are working in concert to achieve the Astroscale mission of safe and sustainable development of space for future generations.”

Luxembourg, 13 October 2020. – Astroscale raised an additional funding of $51 million from a group of investors, bringing the total capital raised to $191 million, the Japanese orbital debris removal company said today.

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WASHINGTON — SpaceX, Hughes Network Systems and Viasat are eligible to compete for a share of the $20.4 billion in broadband subsidies the FCC plans to dole out under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) starting later this month.

The Federal Communications Commission on Oct. 13 released a list of “qualified bidders” for the RDOF funds, which will be awarded via reverse auction to telecom providers bidding to bring subsidized voice and broadband internet services to rural communities and other underserved parts of the United States.

FCC’s list of qualified bidders includes 386 telecom providers, including SpaceX, Hughes and Viasat.

(From left) NASA astronaut Kate Rubins with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov will launch to the space station for a six-month research mission. A trio of space travelers, including NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, is s…

A trio of space travelers, including NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, is scheduled to launch aboard the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 1:45 a.m. EDT (10:45 a.m. Kazakhstan time) Wednesday, Oct. 14.

Beginning at 12:45 a.m., NASA Television and the agency’s website will provide live coverage of the crew’s launch. Teams at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan are making final preparations for the liftoff of Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

Continue reading “Three Space Travelers Countdown to Early Wednesday Launch” »

The planned launch of a private commercial airlock to the International Space Station in November will accelerate NASA’s plan to turn the station into a hub of private industry, space agency officials said.

The commercialization plan also includes the launch of a private habitat and laboratory by 2024 and a project NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced on Twitter in May in which actor Tom Cruise will film a movie in space.

The 20-year-old space station may even have a private citizen on board again for the first time in years in late 2021, according to Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of commercial spaceflight. It’s part of a plan to wean the space station off NASA’s public funding of $3 billion to $4 billion per year.

The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has failed to fix the air leak in the Russian Zvezda by using adhesive tape in the module’s section, where a crack is supposedly located, as the pressure continues to decline, according to conversations between the ISS crew and Earth, broadcast by NASA.

On Thursday, the Moscow Mission Control Center instructed Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner to use as much tape as possible in Zvezda’s intermediate chamber, where the source of the leak is expected to be located.

On Friday morning, Vagner informed specialists at the Center that the pressure in the compartment had declined by 17 mm Hg down to 715 mm Hg.

A Russian Soyuz booster arrived at its launch pad on the Kazakh steppe Sunday, the last stop before liftoff Wednesday with a three-person crew bound for the International Space Station.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket emerged from its assembly building at sunrise Sunday for the railroad trek to pad 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After the Soyuz reached the pad, hydraulic cylinders raised the three-stage rocket vertical and gantry arms folded into position around the launcher.

Scientists at the University of Hawaii’s Mānoa Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have used AI to produce the world’s largest 3D catalog of stars, galaxies, and quasars.

The team developed the map using an optical survey of three-quarters of the sky produced by the Pan-STARRS observatory on Haleakalā, Maui.

They trained an algorithm to identify celestial objects in the survey by feeding it spectroscopic measurements that provide definitive object classifications and distances.