NASA HOPES TO HAND THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION TO A COMMERCIAL OWNER BY MID 2020S - NASA is giving us some more insight into its plans to get humans to Mars, under the blanket mission called ‘Journey to Mars,’ and during the press conference, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Bill Hill revealed that the current hope is to hand off control of the International Space Station to a commercial owner by sometime around the mid 2020s. “NASA’s trying to develop economic development in low-earth orbit,” Hill said, speaking on a panel of NASA staff assembled to discuss the upcoming Mars mission.    More
(Source: TechCrunch - Aug 19)

CO COMPANY TO LAUNCH YET ANOTHER SATELLITE - Westminster-based company DigitalGlobe will expand its fleet of high resolution satellites with the addition of WorldView-4 in September. The new satellite, which is expected to launch on Sept. 15, will be able to take high-resolution pictures of Earth from more than 380 miles above the earth. With the other network of satellites already in place, photographs of locations can be taken on average of 4.5 times per day. Several Colorado companies are behind the effort. WorldView-4 will be launched by Centennial based United Launch Alliance. It was built by Lockheed Martin which has several ties to the state.   More
(Source: The Denver Channel - Aug 17)

WALLOPS LAUNCH NOW PLANNED FOR WEDNESDAY - A Terrier Improved-Malemute suborbital sounding rocket is now scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wednesday morning after Tuesday’s scheduled launch was scrubbed due to boats being present in the hazard area off the coast, reported WTKR. The launch window is from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. with backup launch dates planned for August 18 and 19. The rocket will carry experiments developed by college students participating in the RockSat-X program in conjunction with the Colorado Space Grant Consortium.   More
(Source: wtvr.com - Aug 17)

WHY SMALL SATELLITES ARE BIG FOR STARTUPS - Small satellites, and the startups that make them, are becoming a big deal – and there’s a fresh flurry of industry reports that explain why. The bottom line is that new types of satellite data can give earthbound businesses an edge. For example, a hedge-fund manager can estimate how much revenue Walmart will report by counting the cars in the stores’ parking lots. Farmers can use custom-delivered, hyperspectral imaging to monitor how their crops are doing. Petroleum companies can get a quick alert on potential pipeline leaks.   More
(Source: GeekWire - Aug 16)

CHINA LAUNCHES 'HACK-PROOF' QUANTUM COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE - China on Tuesday launched the world's first quantum satellite, which will help it establish "hack-proof" communications between space and the ground, state media said, the latest advance in an ambitious space programme. The programme is a priority as Xi Jinping, the president, has urged China to establish itself as a space power, and apart from its civilian ambitions, it has tested anti-satellite missiles. The Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, or QUESS, satellite, was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the remote northwestern province of Gansu in the early hours of Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency said.   More
(Source: Telegraph.co.uk - Aug 16)

GOLD-MEDAL VIEWS! INCREDIBLE IMAGES SHOW RIO SUMMER OLYMPICS FROM SPACE - Multiple satellites orbiting high above Earth have captured spectacular images of Rio de Janeiro, the city hosting this summer's Olympic Games. The streets of Rio and the massive structures built to house the games are visible in snapshots of Rio from orbit taken by Earth-observing sensors named Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and Deimos-2, operated by the Vancouver-based UrtheCast, an Earth imagery company that operates satellites and two HD cameras on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS). The Maracanã Stadium, which housed the opening ceremony on Aug. 5 and will host the closing ceremony on Aug. 21, is one structure that is clearly visible in a video that brings together multiple images taken by the UrtheCast sensors.    More
(Source: Space.com - Aug 16)

NASA VIDEO SHOWS METEOR SHOWER… FROM ABOVE! - Late last week marked the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower, generally one of the most dependable shooting star shows of the year. You can usually spot about a meteor per minute streaking across the sky, leaving behind a momentary trail of vaporized rock that fades rapidly as it cools in the upper atmosphere. Meteors burn up about 90 - 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. So what happens if you happen to be 400 km up, orbiting the Earth? What would it look like if you were looking down, toward the Earth, during a meteor shower? That video was made on Aug. 10, 2016 using a camera on the International Space Station, specifically designed to look for meteors from above.   More
(Source: Slate Magazine - Aug 15)

SPACEX LAUNCHES SECOND JCSAT MISSION VIA FALCON 9 - SpaceX launched Japan’s JCSAT-16 communications satellite in the early hours of Sunday via a Falcon 9 rocket, with lift off occurring from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral at the start of a two-hour launch window that opened at 01:26 local time (05:26 UTC). Once again, a return of the first stage to SpaceX’s drone ship was successful. Making its eighth launch of the year, the Falcon 9 delivered JCSAT-16 into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. It is the second mission that SpaceX have flown for JCSAT-16’s operator, Sky Perfect JSAT Corporation, following the successful launch of JCSAT-14 in May.   More
(Source: NASASpaceFlight - Aug 14)

WATCH SPACEX COUNT DOWN TO LAUNCH OF JCSAT-16 SATELLITE AND A ROCKET LANDING - SpaceX is due to launch a second satellite for a Japanese communication company tonight, followed by another rocket landing attempt in the Atlantic Ocean. The JCSAT-16 satellite is to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida atop SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, during a roughly two-hour window that opens at 1:26 a.m. ET Sunday (10:26 p.m. PT Saturday). SpaceX is scheduled to live-stream the countdown via its website and YouTube, beginning about 20 minutes before liftoff. This mission comes a little more than three months after the California-based company put JCSAT-14 into orbit for SKY Perfect JSAT, one of the Asia-Pacific region’s leading satellite operators. JCSAT-16 will serve as an in-orbit backup for SKY Perfect JSAT’s fleet, which provides video distribution and other data services in Asia, Russia, Oceania, the Middle East and North America.   More
(Source: GeekWire - Aug 14)

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