RAF PILOT TO HELP LAUNCH SPACE SATELLITE - Fifty years after the lunar landing the Royal Air Force is taking its first small steps into space. Flight Lieutenant Mathew Stannard will be the first RAF pilot to help launch a satellite as part of the Ministry of Defence's £30m space programme. He will be swapping the cockpit of his RAF Typhoon jet for a heavier and slower Boeing 747. The specially adapted passenger plane has been designed to carry a rocket which can launch satellites into space. More (Source: BBC News - Oct 3)
HOW NASA WILL GRAPPLE AND REFUEL A SATELLITE IN LOW EARTH ORBIT - For the foreseeable future, access to space will remain very expensive. Even with tricks like reusing rockets or launching from balloons and giant airplanes, it still costs thousands of dollars per kilogram to put something into low Earth orbit. And once you've put something up there, that thing is generally on its own (with very few exceptions), and hopefully does what it needs to until it runs out of fuel, at which point most satellites are completely useless. This is, overall, an extraordinarily inefficient system. NASA would like to change this, and thinks that putting gas stations and repair shops in space would be an absolutely smashing idea. More (Source: IEEE Spectrum - Oct 3)
AMAZON’S PROJECT KUIPER AND ONEWEB RAISE THE CURTAIN HIGHER ON THEIR SATELLITE PLANS - Filings with the Federal Communications Commission are providing fresh details about the plans being laid by Amazon and OneWeb to set up networks of satellites for global broadband internet access. OneWeb, for example, is seeking FCC approval for up to 1.5 million ground terminals that customers would use to receive and transmit satellite data. More (Source: GeekWire - Oct 3)
LIVE COVERAGE: THREE-MAN CREW, INCLUDING FIRST UAE ASTRONAUT, TO LAND THURSDAY - A Russian commander, his NASA co-pilot and the Emirati to fly in are set to return to Earth Thursday, heading for a fiery re-entry inside the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft on the way to a parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan. The trio will depart the International Space Station at 3:37 a.m. EDT (0737 GMT) Thursday, and landing on the Kazakh steppe is scheduled for 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT). More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Oct 3)
CHINA COULD BLIND U.S. SATELLITES WITH LASERS - The commander of U.S. Space Command warns that China would likely target U.S. spy satellites in a future conflict and is very likely developing lasers designed to do exactly that. In response, SPACECOM is developing a “playbook” with the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates America’s fleet of reconnaissance satellites, to protect and defend America’s eyes in space. National Defense reports that Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, commander of both SPACECOM and U.S. Air Force Space Command, made the remarks at a gathering organized by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. More (Source: Popular Mechanics - Oct 2)
THE PENTAGON WANTS TO EXTEND THE LIFE OF SATELLITES AND REFUEL ON ORBIT - Northrop Grumman is on the verge of launching a new satellite servicing vehicle that could extend the life of satellites by years, and the Pentagon is interested in becoming a customer. The lifespan of satellites is often limited by their allotment of fuel, which they use to remain in their assigned orbit or to move to a new one. While the satellite might be fully operational for years to come, if it runs out of fuel then it’s the end of the road. So even though the technology already in orbit is still useful to a client, a satellite provider has to launch an entirely new space vehicle with enough fuel to replace the doomed satellite. But what if satellites could be refueled in orbit? More (Source: C4ISRNet - Oct 2)
ASTROSCALE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON WORK ON SPACE DEBRIS REMOVAL - Astroscale will collaborate with the University of Southampton on a project to investigate collision risks between satellites, highlighting the necessity for financial incentives for satellite operators to engage with active debris removal services. The University of Southampton is a partner university on the national SPRINT (SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology) program and the project with Astroscale will be funded by SPRINT. More (Source: VIA Satellite - Oct 1)
DATA FROM CHINESE SATELLITE SHEDDING LIGHT ON COSMIC RAYS - An international team of researchers studying data from China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) has measured cosmic ray protons up to the energy of 100 TeV with high precision for the first time. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes the research they have been conducting on data received from the satellite and what they have learned thus far. More (Source: Phys.org - Oct 1)
“BIG, FAT, JUICY TARGETS”— THE PROBLEM WITH EXISTING EARLY-WARNING SATELLITES. AND A SOLUTION. - In 2018, the US Air Force announced its intention to cancel the seventh and eighth space vehicles in the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program—a collection of satellites that provides early warning of incoming missiles—and declared its desire to transition over to the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program, which will serve the same purpose but which proponents say will be less expensive and more robust. Indeed, it was the escalating costs and vulnerability to countermeasures that seem to have motivated the decision to terminate the SBIRS program. More (Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - Oct 1)
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