EXPANDING, AND EVENTUALLY REPLACING, THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), humanity has managed to maintain an uninterrupted foothold in low Earth orbit for just shy of 20 years. There are people reading these words who have had the ISS orbiting overhead for their entire lives, the first generation born into a truly spacefaring civilization. But as the saying goes, what goes up must eventually come down. The ISS is at too low of an altitude to remain in orbit indefinitely, and core modules of the structure are already operating years beyond their original design lifetimes.    More
(Source: Hackaday - Mar 4)

YOUR PHONE MAY SOON RECEIVE 4G SERVICE ... FROM SPACE! - In the United States it’s easy to take cell reception for granted. With few exceptions, you can use your phone to text, call, and get online from pretty much anywhere in the country. Yet about 2 billion people around the world live in areas that lack mobile coverage, mostly far from major cities, which makes building a network of terrestrial cell towers to connect them prohibitively expensive. If you built a cell network in space, it could plug the gaps in global mobile coverage by raining 4G service from satellites to users on the ground.   More
(Source: WIRED - Mar 4)

AFTER LAST-MINUTE ABORT, DARPA LAUNCH CHALLENGE ENDS WITHOUT A WINNER - Astra engineers scrubbed a launch attempt Monday at Kodiak Island, Alaska, to assess troubling data from a guidance, navigation and control sensor on the company’s new small satellite launcher, ending a bid to win up to $12 million in prize money from a U.S. military research agency. Monday’s countdown was aborted on the final day of a 15-day window set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which offered Astra a $2 million prize if it successfully placed three small CubeSats into orbit.   More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 3)

SPACEX TEST-FIRES ROCKET, PREPS FOR FINAL FLIGHT OF FIRST-GENERATION DRAGON CAPSULE - The Falcon 9 booster for SpaceX’s next mission fired up briefly on a Cape Canaveral launch pad Sunday in a routine pre-flight test before a scheduled launch Friday night to kick off the final flight of the first version of the company’s Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station. Nine Merlin 1D main engines at the base of the Falcon 9 booster fired up at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) Sunday at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad.    More
(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 3)

NITROGEN DIOXIDE POLLUTION OVER CHINA PLUMMETS IN NEW SATELLITE IMAGES - The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has caused widespread alarm, travel bans, and the quarantine of multiple cities across the world. But there's also been an unexpected effect on the environment, in the form of a notable drop in nitrogen dioxide emissions levels across China. Data collected from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on ESA's Sentinel-5 satellite shows a significant drop of nitrogen dioxide – a gas mainly emitted by cars, trucks, power plants and some industrial plants - between January 1 and February 25.   More
(Source: ScienceAlert - Mar 2)

NASA WANTS YOU TO PHOTOGRAPH STARLINK SATELLITES WITH YOUR SMARTPHONE - SpaceX and others plan to launch thousands of new satellites into low-Earth orbit, creating streaks that cut through astronomers’ images. Now educators at NASA are asking citizen scientists to help document the problem. Over the coming years, Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company, SpaceX, will launch thousands of small satellites as part of an effort to provide global, space-based internet.    More
(Source: Discover Magezine - Mar 1)

CHINA TO COMPLETE ITS ANSWER TO GPS WITH BEIDOU NAVIGATION SATELLITE LAUNCHES IN MARCH, MAY - China will launch Beidou navigation satellites in March and May this year, completing a constellation designed for an array of civil and military applications. A Long March 3B rocket arrived at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center Feb. 14, according to China News Service. The Beidou satellite for the launch has also arrived at Xichang, the report states. Both missions will launch single satellites to geosynchronous transfer orbits using enhanced hypergolic Long March 3B rockets.   More
(Source: SpaceNews - Feb 29)

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION RESUPPLY MISSION TO CARRY NEW ARISS HAM RADIO GEAR - The scheduled March 7 SpaceX CRS-20 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will include the initial Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) Interoperable Radio System (IORS) flight unit. The IORS is the foundation of the ARISS next-generation amateur radio system on the space station. The ARISS hardware team built four flight units, and the first will be installed in the ISS Columbus module.   More
(Source: ARRL - Feb 29)

FAA ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT DETAILS SPACEX PLANS AT CAPE CANAVERAL - As SpaceX competes for the right to launch future US military satellites, an environmental assessment by the Federal Aviation Administration has revealed details of the company’s plans for national security missions and future operations of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. SpaceX is one of four companies competing for two available contracts under Phase 2 of the Department of Defense’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Feb 28)

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