Lifeboat Foundation

Congrats!

Pinaplano na ng DOST ang paggawa ng cube satellites dito sa Pilipinas matapos makarating sa outer space ang unang cube satellite na gawang Pinoy.

Talk of commercial missions to the moon, constellations of satellites, space tourism, and a trillion-dollar space economy filled the NewSpace conference in Renton Tuesday. There was also a cautionary tale.

Behold, the Earth! See live views of Earth from the coming to you by NASA’s High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment.

Behold, the Earth! See live views of Earth from the International Space Station coming to you by NASA’s High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment.

While the experiment is operational, views will typically sequence through the different cameras. If you are seeing a black image, the Space Station is on the night side of the Earth. If you are seeing an image with text displayed, the communications are switching between satellites and camera feeds are temporarily unavailable. Between camera switches, a black & gray slate will also briefly appear.

Continue reading “Earth Views from the Space Station” »

Friday morning at 5:24 am (0924 GMT), a rocket owned by the US company SpaceX will blast off from Florida carrying two and a half tons of gear from NASA, only to dock three days later and 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth at the International Space Station.

The rocket itself is not new. It launched a NASA satellite into orbit two months ago, then landed back on Earth—upright—on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral.

Even the Dragon capsule, carrying the cargo and affixed to the top of the rocket was used before, having flown a mission to the ISS in 2016.

The Archinaut, a system made of 3D printers and robotic arms, could be the flying factory humans need to colonize space.

I want to thank the Air Force for certifying Falcon Heavy.

A space launch every 3 hours may soon be possible using rockets carried on a fully autonomous unmanned airplane, a new startup company suggests.

Alabama-based startup Aevum aims to per mission, using an air-launch system called Ravn.

“Ravn is designed to launch every 180 minutes,” Jay Skylus, Aevum’s CEO and chief launch architect, told Space.com. “Other launch vehicles fly only a handful of times a year with an average of 18 months of lead time.” [Rocket Launches: The Latest Liftoffs, Photos & Videos].

On May 20, China launched Queqiao, a lunar communications relay satellite for the upcoming Chang’e 4 lander and rover mission. On the way out to the Moon, it dropped off a pair of small satellites bound for lunar orbit called Longjiang-1 and Longjiang-2. The satellites weigh just 45 kilograms each and measure 50-by-50-by-40 centimeters. Their purpose is testing out future radio astronomy and interferometry techniques, and one also has a camera built by Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, Longjiang-1 had a problem and didn’t make it into lunar orbit. Longjiang-2, however, was successful, and sent home a few pictures! Check them out:

A transition is happening in the satellite business. Fast-moving technology and evolving customer demands are driving operators to rethink major investments in new satellites and consider other options such as squeezing a few more years of service out of their current platforms.

Which makes this an opportune moment for the arrival of in-orbit servicing.

Sometime in early 2019, the first commercial servicing spacecraft is scheduled to launch. The Mission Extension Vehicle built by Orbital ATK on behalf of subsidiary SpaceLogistics, will the first of several such robotic craft that are poised to compete for a share of about $3 billion worth of in-orbit services that satellite operators and government agencies are projected to buy over the coming decade.