SPACEX ACES LAST DRAGON PARACHUTE TEST BEFORE CREW LAUNCH - SpaceX completed Friday the last drop test of the Dragon crew capsule’s parachutes before the first launch of astronauts on the human-rated ship May 27, while technicians at Cape Canaveral have mated the spacecraft’s crew module with its unpressurized trunk section. The drop test from a C-130 cargo plane Friday was the 27th and final test of the “Mark 3” parachute design SpaceX will use for the Crew Dragon spacecraft. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 4)
HOW AMATEUR SATELLITE TRACKERS ARE KEEPING AN 'EYE' ON OBJECTS AROUND THE EARTH - Around the planet, a loosely knit but closely woven band of amateurs monitor the whereabouts of satellites — be they secretive spacecraft, robotic space drones, rocket stages, orbital debris or lost-in-space planetary probes. But what's the motivation behind this group of sky prowling spirits? What kind of tools are they using now or in the future to purge secrets from space — at times revealing what some countries don't want others to know about? More (Source: Space.com - May 3)
SCIENTISTS HAVE FOUND A WAY TO USE SATELLITE IMAGERY TO DETECT PLASTIC POLLUTION IN THE OCEAN - In 2018, Lauren Biermann was scouring a satellite image of the ocean off the coast of the Isle of May, Scotland, searching for signs of floating seaweed for a project at her university. Her eyes were drawn to lines of white dots gently curving along an ocean front. “It was weird because I was seeing floating things that didn’t look like plants, and I didn’t know what they could be,” Biermann, an Earth observation scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the U.K., explained. More (Source: The Rising - May 3)
HUBBLE'S IMPACTFUL LIFE ALONGSIDE SPACE DEBRIS - During its 30 years in orbit around Earth, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has witnessed the changing nature of spaceflight as the skies have filled with greater numbers of satellites, the International Space Station was born and in-space crashes and explosions have created clouds of fast-moving space debris. Hubble itself has felt the impact of this debris, accumulating tiny impact craters across its solar panels that evidence a long and eventful life in space. More (Source: Phys.org - May 2)
NEW SATELLITE GIVES CLEAREST VIEW YET OF POLAR ICE MELT - A cutting-edge NASA satellite has provided one of the most detailed looks yet at glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. The findings are clearer than ever: Both ice sheets are losing billions of tons of mass into the ocean each year, contributing significantly to global sea-level rise. The results were published yesterday in the journal Science by a team of researchers from around the country, led by Ben Smith of the University of Washington. More (Source: Scientific American - May 2)
LONG MARCH 5B ROLLED OUT FOR CREWED SPACECRAFT, SPACE STATION TEST LAUNCH - China rolled out a Long March 5B launcher Wednesday for a mission to prove space station launch capabilities and test a new spacecraft for deep space human spaceflight. Images of the Long March 5B shared on Chinese social media indicated that the rollout at Wenchang Satellite Launch Center was completed early April 29. Launch from the coastal Wenchang launch site can now be expected around May 5. However, an official announcement has not yet been made. More (Source: SpaceNews - May 1)
NASA WILL TEST A NEW SPACECRAFT SOLAR SAIL USING A NANOAVIONICS SATELLITE - NASA is going to test a new solar sail system to determine if it’s a viable alternative to propellant-based thrusters for maneuvering small satellites, and potentially for low-cost transportation of spacecraft set on deep-space missions. The agency has selected Illinois-based NanoAvionics to provide the spacecraft that will be used to test the solar sail system, the company announced today. More (Source: TechCrunch - Apr 30)
SPACE FORCE GENERAL TROLLS IRANIAN MILITARY SATELLITE LAUNCH — ‘SPACE IS HARD’ - Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed last week to have put its first military satellite into orbit, revealing in the process a secret space program that fuels already-escalating tensions between the U.S. and Tehran. The launch followed an April 15 incident in which nearly a dozen Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vessels harassed six U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, an action that prompted President Donald Trump to tweet instructions for the “United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.” More (Source: Military Times - Apr 30)
COMMERCIAL SOYUZ FLIGHT TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION PLANNED FOR 2022-2023 - A six-month commercial Soyuz flight to the International Space Station (ISS) is planned for 2022-2023, according to files obtained by Sputnik. According to the documents, the launch of a Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft with a Russian cosmonaut as crew commander and two unknown crew members is planned for October 2022, while a return to Earth is planned for April 2023. No details are provided on the two passengers. More (Source: Space Daily - Apr 29)
LAUNCH OF PROGRESS MS-15 RESUPPLY SHIP TO SPACE STATION SCHEDULED FOR JULY - The launch of the Progress MS-15 resupply ship to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for the summer of 2020, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos reported on its Twitter account on Tuesday. "The launch to the ISS is scheduled for July this year," the statement reads. More (Source: TASS - Apr 29)
ELON MUSK PROVIDES MORE DETAILS ABOUT SPACEX’S PLAN TO REDUCE STARLINK SATELLITE VISIBILITY - During a virtual conference briefing this week, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk provided more details about a new plan that his company has to mitigate the impact of their Starlink satellite constellation on night sky observation. Musk first revealed on Twitter the intent to build a “sun visor” to lower their visibility, but we didn’t know much about how it would work or how it compared to the test dark paint job that SpaceX tried previously. More (Source: TechCrunch - Apr 29)
AMATEUR RADIO SLEUTH REDISCOVERS A COLD WAR-ERA 'ZOMBIE SATELLITE' - An amateur radio hobbyist has zeroed in on the signal of a U.S. military satellite abandoned nearly fifty years ago. The LES-5 satellite, launched in 1967, was an early experiment in satellite-based communications broadcasting continuously since it was launched in 1967. It was decommissioned and placed in a “graveyard orbit” in 1972. But incredibly it’s still working and is transmitting to anyone able to listen. More (Source: Ppopular Mechanics - Apr 29)
GET OUT OF THE WAY: THE 1ST RESTARTABLE SOLID ROCKET FUEL COULD HELP REDUCE SPACE JUNK - In the 2013 movie "Gravity," space junk nearly killed Sandra Bullock. While that story was most definitely fiction (and sensational fiction at that), the threat of space junk is real — so real that NASA has a whole office devoted to tracking and mitigating it. And last year marked the first international conference focused entirely on orbital debris. There's good reason to be concerned. Currently, about 2,000 operational satellites orbit the Earth — not to mention another 3,000 non-operational ones — and that number is expected to skyrocket. This year, more than 1,500 satellites are scheduled for launch. (Compare this to 2018, when only 365 were launched.) More (Source: Space.com - Apr 28)
A SATELLITE LOOK BACK AT 50 YEARS OF EARTH DAY - Last week on Wednesday, April 22 was the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Taking a step back and viewing the Earth from above not only can spark awe, it also can inspire change. Case in point—in 1969, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson witnessed an 800-square-mile oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel as his plane flew over the disaster. What he saw inspired him to create the first Earth Day the following year. More (Source: WeatherNation - Apr 28)
THE AIR FORCE WANTS YOU TO HACK ITS SATELLITE IN ORBIT. YES, REALLY - When the Air Force asked hackers to break into a F-15 fighter jet at last year’s DEF CON security conference, the results were both eye-opening and eye-watering. It was the first time hackers were allowed to work on the system to look for bugs. In just two days, a team of seven hackers found a ton of vulnerabilities, which if exploited in the real world could have crippled a critical aircraft data system, causing untold and potentially catastrophic damage. It was also proof that the Air Force desperately needed help. More (Source: TechCrunch - Apr 27)
IRAN'S MILITARY SATELLITE A 'TUMBLING WEBCAM IN SPACE,' SPACE FORCE COMMANDER SAYS - The first satellite launched into space by Iran last week that revealed the country's secret military space program is nothing but “a tumbling webcam in space," the head of the U.S military's newest service said Saturday. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday it put up a “Noor," or "Light," satellite into a low orbit circling the Earth after using a mobile launcher at a new launch site. More (Source: Fox News - Apr 27)
AN ASTRONAUT SPOTTED SPACEX’S STARLINK INTERNET SATELLITES FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - An astronaut on the International Space Station last week captured a unique view of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites – photographing a group of the satellites in space, from space. Starlink is SpaceX’s plan to build a network of about 12,000 small satellites to provide high-speed internet to anywhere in the world. The company has launched 360 Starlink satellites in the past year and aims to begin offering early, limited service later in 2020. More (Source: CNBC - Apr 26)
PROGRESS MS-14 CARGO CRAFT DOCKS WITH ISS - The Progress MS-14 cargo craft, launched on April 25 at 04:51 Moscow time from the Baikonur cosmodrome, has docked successfully with the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian space agency Roscosmos has transmitted the docking on its website. The cargo craft will deliver the Victory Day (the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Second World War) paraphernalia to the ISS, as well as data on the war fighters within the "Immortal Regiment on the ISS" project. More (Source: TASS - Apr 26)
SOYUZ LAUNCHES FROM KAZAKHSTAN WITH SPACE STATION SUPPLY SHIP - A Soyuz rocket decorated to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe fired into space Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, sending a Progress supply ship on a fast-track, three-hour pursuit of the International Space Station. The Soyuz-2.1a booster ignited its kerosene-fueled engines at climbed away from Launch Pad No. 31 at Baikonur at 9:51:41 p.m. EDT Friday (0151 GMT Saturday) to kick off a nine-minute climb into orbit. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 25)
