Lifeboat Foundation

The space agency said, “the lack of a downlink signal could be indicative of a system failure.”

NASA has lost contact with a three-year-old satellite in Earth orbit. The space agency’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) lost contact with ground controllers two weeks ago and is orbiting Earth without a connection. NASA fears this may be due to a system failure that could mean it has lost contact with the satellite for good.

ICON is an atmosphere-studying satellite that was operating beyond its intended lifetime before it lost contact on Nov. 25, NASA wrote in a blog post.

Continue reading “NASA loses contact with $252 million ICON satellite, fears total system failure” »

A year ago, astronomers discovered a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) lasting nearly two minutes, dubbed GRB 211211A. Now, that unusual event is upending the long-standing assumption that longer GRBs are the distinctive signature of a massive star going supernova. Instead, two independent teams of scientists identified the source as a so-called “kilonova,” triggered by the merger of two neutron stars, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. Because neutron star mergers were assumed to only produce short GRBs, the discovery of a hybrid event involving a kilonova with a long GRB is quite surprising.

“This detection breaks our standard idea of gamma-ray bursts,” said co-author Eve Chase, a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “We can no longer assume that all short-duration bursts come from neutron-star mergers, while long-duration bursts come from supernovae. We now realize that gamma-ray bursts are much harder to classify. This detection pushes our understanding of gamma-ray bursts to the limits.”

As we’ve reported previously, gamma-ray bursts are extremely high-energy explosions in distant galaxies lasting between mere milliseconds to several hours. The first gamma-ray bursts were observed in the late 1960s, thanks to the launching of the Vela satellites by the US. They were meant to detect telltale gamma-ray signatures of nuclear weapons tests in the wake of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. The US feared that the Soviets were conducting secret nuclear tests, violating the treaty. In July 1967, two of those satellites picked up a flash of gamma radiation that was clearly not the signature of a nuclear weapons test.

In a press conference that Ars attended today, Department of Defense officials discussed the benefits of partnering with Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon to build the Pentagon’s new cloud computing network. The multi-cloud strategy was described as a necessary move to keep military personnel current as technology has progressed and officials’ familiarity with cloud technology has matured.

Air Force Lieutenant General Robert Skinner said that this Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract—worth $9 billion—would help quickly expand cloud capabilities across all defense departments. He described new accelerator capabilities like preconfigured templates and infrastructure as code that will make it so that even “people who don’t understand cloud can leverage cloud” technologies. Such capabilities could help troops on the ground easily access data gathered by unmanned aircraft or space communications satellites.

“JWCC is a multiple-award contract vehicle that will provide the DOD the opportunity to acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from the commercial Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) at the speed of mission, at all classification levels, from headquarters to the tactical edge,” DOD’s press release said.

SpaceX revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies. “While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads,” the company said on its website.

This is a big deal as SpaceX is currently burning through $2 billion/year as it works to develop Starlink and Starship. So SpaceX wouldn’t mind some extra cash!

WASHINGTON — SpaceX on Dec. 2 revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies.

Continue reading “SpaceX rolls out new business line focused on military satellite services” »

After the successful completion of India’s first space mission, homegrown firms are now looking to set up manufacturing facilities for satellites etc. Homegrown space startups, Pixxel and Dhruva Space, are eyeing new assembly facilities for satellite manufacturing in the country, following successful satellite launch missions on November 26.

Satellite manufacturing is an integral part of India’s plans for the space sector. The government’s liberalized space policy, which is said to be in the final stages of completion, is expected to allow the country’s firms to take a larger share of the global space market. At present, India accounts for only 2% of the global space economy, according to data shared by Jitendra Singh, Minister of State (MoS) for science, technology and earth sciences, in the Lok Sabha in August.

The two companies are also part of a growing crop of homegrown private space startups that are launching the final trial phase of their products and services. On November 18, Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace became India’s first private firm to launch its own rocket. Pixxel and Dhruva’s satellites were successfully deployed in their intended low-earth orbits (LEOs) on November 26. India’s upcoming space policy is expected to invite more participation from such startups, taking some of the load off ISRO and its coffers.

The Federal Communications Commission issued a key authorization to Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Thursday to launch up to 7,500 next-generation satellites in its Starlink internet network.

“Specifically, we grant SpaceX authority to construct, deploy, and operate up to 7,500 satellites operating at altitudes of 525,530, and 535 km and inclinations of 53, 43, and 33 degrees, respectively, using frequencies in the Ku-and Ka-band. We defer consideration of SpaceX’s proposed use of E-band frequencies and tracking beacons,” said the order.

A small satellite developed by MIT engineers has set a new record for data transmission between a satellite and Earth. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system used a laser to beam huge amounts of data at up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).

This data transmission speed is far greater than most connections you’ll get between the sky and the ground. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet offers up to 500 Mbps to Premium customers, and even the International Space Station’s data transmission tops out around 600 Mbps. That makes TBIRD up to 200 times faster.

The key difference is that most satellites communicate with ground stations via radio waves. TBIRD, on the other hand, uses laser light, which can carry up to 1,000 times more data in each transmission. Lasers come with their own hurdles though – the beams are much narrower, requiring more precise alignment between transmitter and receiver. And the light can be distorted by the atmosphere, leading to data loss. So TBIRD was designed to overcome these issues.

It will take 1.5 years to reach its final destination far beyond the moon.

In a world first, Japan’s space agency announced it successfully used steam to propel a spacecraft toward the Moon. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) water-powered CubeSat spacecraft, EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U (EQUULEUS), was launched on its way by NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which recently broke a record for the farthest distance traveled by a human-rated spacecraft.

“This is the world’s first successful orbit control beyond low-Earth orbit using water propellant propulsion system,” JAXA said in a statement on Saturday.

Continue reading “‘World’s first’ steam-propelled spacecraft heads to the moon and beyond” »

Plenty of potential solutions have been put forward to deal with the problem, but they all face a similar problem at the first step: how to track the debris they’re attempting to eliminate. Enter a new idea from researchers in Iran — using a novel type of radar to detect and track space debris before it becomes a danger.

The novel type of radar is called inverse synthetic aperture radar, or ISAR. As one might expect from the name, it’s the opposite of synthetic aperture radar (SAR). SAR has become much more prominent lately, especially by satellites attempting to collect data about the Earth, especially terrain data that might be useful for geospatial mapping.

Continue reading “A cutting-edge radar system could be a front-line tool to fight dangerous space junk” »