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Category: space – Page 766

SpaceX, Hughes and Viasat qualify to bid for $20.4 billion in FCC rural broadband subsidies

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.

Three Space Travelers Countdown to Early Wednesday Launch

(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.

The launch will send the crew members on a two-orbit, three-hour journey to the space station, where they will join Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, temporarily increasing the orbiting laboratory’s population to six people.

NASA advances plan to commercialize International Space Station

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.

ISS crew fails to resolve air leak issue in Russia’s Zvezda Module with adhesive tape

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.

Russian rocket for next space station crew transferred to launch pad

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.

AI helps produce world’s largest 3D map of the universe

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.

Hubble sees swirls of forming stars

At around 60 million light-years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC 1365, is captured beautifully in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the blue and fiery orange swirls show us where stars have just formed and the dusty sites of future stellar nurseries.

At the outer edges of the image, enormous star-forming regions within NGC 1365 can be seen. The bright, light-blue regions indicate the presence of hundreds of baby that formed from coalescing gas and dust within the galaxy’s outer arms.

This Hubble image was captured as part of a joint survey with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The survey will help scientists understand how the diversity of galaxy environments observed in the nearby universe, including NGC 1365 and other galaxies such as NGC 2835 and NGC 2775, influence the formation of stars and star clusters. Expected to image over 100,000 gas clouds and star-forming regions beyond our Milky Way, the PHANGS survey is expected to uncover and clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, , and the overall shape and morphology of galaxies.

#SpaceWatchGL Opinion: Space Situational Awareness Together We Stand, Divided We Fall

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch. Global and Joint Air Power Competence Centre, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Space Situational Awareness Together We Stand, Divided We Fall”, originally published in the Joint Air Power Competence Centre Journal 30.

by Major General Juan P. Sánchez de Lara, SP AF, Commander in Chief Canary Islands Air Command

Space as an Operational Domain.

The Most Sensitive Optical Receivers Yet for for Laser-Beam Based Space Communications

Communications in space demand the most sensitive receivers possible for maximum reach, while also requiring high bit-rate operations. A novel concept for laser-beam based communications, using an almost noiseless optical preamplifier in the receiver, was recently demonstrated by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

In a new paper published in the scientific journal Nature: Light Science & Applications, a team of researchers describes a free-space optical transmission system relying on an optical amplifier that, in principle, does not add any excess noise — in contrast to all other preexisting optical amplifiers, referred to as phase-sensitive amplifiers (PSAs).

The researchers’ new concept demonstrates an unprecedented receiver sensitivity of just one photon-per-information bit at a data rate of 10 gigabits per second.

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