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Category: space – Page 708

China pushes ahead with giant 13,000 satellite LEO constellation

China is pushing ahead with developing a giant Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation competing with SpaceX, Amazon and OneWeb, according to the Washington DC-based analyst Bhavya Lal and California State University’s Professor Larry Press.

Press, professor of information systems at the California State University, mentioned a recent Chinese spectrum filing in a blog of the CircleID website. China “has filed a spectrum application with the International Telecommunication Union for two constellations with the cryptic names GW-A59 and GW-2″ for a total of 12,992 satellites, Press said.

“We heard about an announcement of a constellation with nearly 13,000 satellites,” Bhavya Lal said in SpaceWatchGlobal’s Space Café webtalk last week. Lal is a senior space policy analyst at the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington DC and was in the lead for IDA’s recently published report “Evaluation of China’s Commercial Space Sector”.

“Out of around 20 Chinese companies engaged in satellite communications, fewer than a half dozen have proposed constellations,” Lal summarized the report’s findings. “Many focus on narrowband communications, targeting markets such as the Internet of Things (IoT).” Companies considering satellite broadband at an early stage include LinkSure and Galaxy Space, Lal said, while state-owned enterprises such as CASIC and CASC “have the deeper pockets needed to more rapidly launch satellite constellations”.

Regarding the not state-owned enterprises (SOE’s) “we found that these broadband companies are all very early-stage, still in the R&D phase, and do not have much in the way of hardware to launch,” Lal said. “However, as in other areas, the Chinese are making fast progress. The best we can tell the current focus of most companies is domestic. But as the Chinese have done in other areas such as high-speed rail, it would be not a stretch of the imagination that once the bugs in the system are worked out domestically, the Chinese will begin to market services internationally.”

Scientists dazed and confused by extraordinary amount of gold in the universe

They say if you spread out all the gold ever mined from the Earth in all of history, it would only cover a football field 18 inches deep.

Now when you wrap you mind around that image, it doesn’t seem like very much, especially when you digest the fact that the solar system is literally brimming with gold but scientists can’t quite figure out where all this hard-to-make metal is being created.

This Week, Mars Is The Closest to Earth It’ll Be For Another 15 Years

Mars, our second closest cosmic cousin, has been in our collective imagination for decades. Between fantasies of martian visits and the promise of water under its icy surface, Mars doesn’t need to do much to be in our collective good books.

But very soon, Mars is not just going to be close to our hearts, but also nearest to our actual planet — a mere 62.1 million kilometres (38.6 million miles) away from Earth.

This is the closest it’ll be for the next 15 years. And it means that stargazing is highly recommended as Mars will be bright, big and easy to see with or without a telescope.

Something is raining gold across the universe

Even the most optimistic estimates of neutron star collision frequency can’t account for the sheer abundance of gold and other elements in the Universe. This was a surprise. It looks like spinning supernovae with strong magnetic fields could be the real source of the majority of these elements.” ates of neutron star collision frequency can’t account for the sheer abundance of gold and other elements in the Universe. This was a surprise. It looks like spinning supernovae with strong magnetic fields could be the real source of the majority of these elements.” ates of neutron star collision frequency simply can’t account for the sheer abundance of gold and other elements in the Universe.

New Experiments Headed to the Space Station: Radishes, Advanced Imaging, and Liquid Metal

Science typically begins with a question. It may be: “How will astronauts maintain a nutritious diet on long-duration missions?” Or “How can the way metals are made be improved by studying them in space?” These are just two of the questions researchers seek to answer with the upcoming launch of new research, technology demonstrations, and commercial products headed to our unique microgravity laboratory orbiting Earth.

NASA uses the spaceflight environment to further our understanding of how to successfully live and work in space. These space experiments help us understand the effects of radiation, microgravity and other factors on life and physical systems. It is also an important aspect in understanding how to sustain life on the Moon and eventually Mars.

On Friday, October 2, 2020, at 9:16 p.m. EDT, new space experiments and a new space toilet launched on Northrop Grumman’s 14th commercial resupply mission for the agency to the International Space Station.

Creating Cross-Domain Kill Webs in Real Time

Two DARPA-developed technologies – a novel decision aid for mission commanders and a rapid software integration tool – played a critical role in the recent Air Force demonstration of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).

The Adapting Cross-domain Kill-webs (ACK) program and the System-of-systems Technology Integration Tool Chain for Heterogeneous Electronic Systems (STITCHES) were among a number of technologies employed in the Aug. 31 – Sep. 4 ABMS on-ramp demonstration, which involved attacks using live aircraft, ships, air defense batteries, and other assets.

ACK is developing a decision aid for mission commanders to assist them with rapidly identifying and selecting options for tasking – and re-tasking – assets within and across organizational boundaries. Specifically, ACK assists users with selecting sensors, effectors, and support elements across military domains (space, air, land, surface, subsurface, and cyber) that span the different military services to deliver desired effects on targets. Instead of limited, monolithic, pre-defined kill chains, these more disaggregated forces can be used to formulate adaptive “kill webs” based on all of the options available.

Astronauts found God in space

I didn’t realize there was a moon-landing Bible verse until my pastor mentioned it a few weeks ago.

It seems that while returning from the historic first landing on the moon 50 years ago, astronaut Buzz Aldrin took part in a TV broadcast the night before splashing down. During the broadcast, the second man to set foot on the moon’s surface read Psalms 8:3–4: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him? And the Son of Man, that thou visitest him?”

It turns out Aldrin’s religious faith is not an anomaly. In fact, the 29 astronauts who visited the moon during the Apollo program were a generally religious cohort. According to NASA, 23 were Protestant and six Catholic, with a high proportion of them serving as church leaders in their congregations.