SOUTH ASIA SATELLITE'S LAUNCH: COUNTDOWN TO BEGIN ON THURSDAY - The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch South Asia Satellite or GSAT-9 into orbit on Friday, May 5, 2017 from the Second Launch Pad (SLP) at Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharikota. As per sources in the Indian space agency, the countdown for the launch of South Asia Satellite will begin on Thursday morning. ISRO is also getting ready for the maiden launch of its heaviest GSLV rocket by this month-end. More (Source: Zee News - May 4)
SPACEX PLANS TO START DELIVERING SATELLITE INTERNET IN 2019 - Last November, SpaceX asked the FCC for permission to launch 4,425 satellites to provide high speed internet around the globe. While current satellite internet can be slow and high-latency, the Elon Musk-founded company promises its proposed service will be much better thanks to custom satellites deployed into low-Earth orbit. In a Senate hearing today on US Broadband infrastructure, SpaceX's vice president of government affairs Patricia Cooper explained the company's plan, which includes its intention to begin launch operations in 2019. More (Source: Engadget - May 4)
SATELLITE ELECTRICAL DAMAGE LINKED TO SPACE DUST - The cause of several mysterious satellite failures may have been discovered, if simulations carried out at Stanford University in California hold firm in physical space. The simulations, published in the journal Physics of Plasmas, promise an answer to a question bothering lead author, aeronautics professor Sigrid Close, for more than seven years. Everyone in the space business has long recognised that meteoroids – tiny space rocks sometimes no bigger than a grain of dust – can cause severe mechanical damage when they smash into a satellite. More (Source: Cosmos - May 3)
SPACEX LAUNCHES SECRETIVE SPY SATELLITE - SpaceX just launched a mysterious spy satellite toward orbit for a U.S. intelligence agency. Elon Musk's commercial rocket company made a successful liftoff Monday morning from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission was supposed to happen Sunday, but SpaceX delayed its flight because of a sensor problem on the bottom part of the rocket. The customer for the launch was the National Reconnaissance Office, a U.S. government agency that develops and maintains spy satellites. More (Source: CNN Money - May 1)
SPACE JUNK LEFT IN SPACE: HUMANITY'S NEXT POLLUTION PROBLEM WITH PROPOSED SOLUTIONS - It has been over 60 years since the race to space programs started. 19,000 rocket launch episodes and only 1,400 of them are registered as under control and accounted for. The rest are aimlessly floating in space and that includes items from lens caps to huge separated rocket tank canisters. Space pollution is the next challenge man has to face. The danger abounds for functional satellites in operation exposed to space junk littering in space above us. More (Source: Science Times - May 1)
THE RACE TO SPACE: EXPERTS SAY 2018 WILL BE THE YEAR SPACE TOURISM TAKES OFF - Space. The final frontier, and quite possibly your family's next March Break vacation. Experts say 2018 will be the year space tourism takes off. But while great leaps are being made at what seems like warp speed, it's a venture that's still fraught with issues that go far beyond its out-of-this-world price tag. Cost of launch, of course, remains a major barrier, and one way to bring it down from seven figures to six, or even five, is to build rockets that don't end up as space junk after one launch. More (Source: CBC.ca - May 1)
SPACEX LAUNCH SCRUBBED IN FINAL MINUTE OF COUNTDOWN - SpaceX scrubbed an attempt to launch a commercial Falcon 9 rocket Sunday less than a minute before liftoff, blaming a sensor issue on the vehicle’s first stage and pushing back the company’s first national security mission for the U.S. government at least 24 hours. The Falcon 9 launch director called a hold at T-minus 52 seconds as the countdown ticked toward a planned blastoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT) Sunday, immediately ordering the launch team to ready for another try Monday. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 30)
BEAUTIFUL BERING STRAIT IMAGE CAPTURED BY COPERNICUS SENTINEL-3A SATELLITE - NASA's Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite snapped a stunning photo of the Bering Strait during a recent trip across the narrow strip of water separating Alaska and Siberia. The image was captured on March 26 and shared online on April 28. The Sentinel-3A is an Earth observation satellite launched as part of the Copernicus mission by the European Space Agency. The satellite was carried into orbit on January 16, 2016, and is dedicated to the study of oceanography. In the bottom half of the image, clouds can be seen swirling across the strait. At the top of the image, sea ice extends southward. More (Source: UPI - Apr 29)
CHINA TO BEGIN CONSTRUCTION OF MANNED SPACE STATION IN 2019 - China will begin construction of a permanent manned space station in 2019 after carrying out a successful in-orbit refueling from its Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft, officials leading the project said on Friday. The Tianzhou-1, China's first cargo spacecraft, launched on April 20 and completed the first of three planned docking attempts with the orbiting Tiangong-2 spacelab two days later, state media reported. The successful five-day refueling, directed from technicians on Earth and completed on Thursday, is a key milestone toward China's plans to begin sending crews to a permanent space station by 2022. More (Source: U.S. News & World Report - Apr 29)
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