Copernical Team
Air-breathing ion engines could continuously boost spacecraft anywhere there's an atmosphere
Staying in orbit can be challenging, at least for lower orbits that are more affected by Earth's atmosphere. But, such orbits also come with advantages, such as better vantage points for new commercial operations such as Earth Observation and telecommunications connections. So there is an incentive for anyone who can figure out how to functionally keep a satellite in orbit at those lower altitudes for long periods. One of the best paths toward that goal seems to be an ion engine that takes in atmospheric particles and uses them for thrust. Now, a recently released paper explores potential use cases for such an engine and suggests a path toward their commercialization.
One of the biggest problems with maintaining very low Earth orbit (VLEO) is fuel. At those altitudes, usually considered below 450 km from the surface or about as high as the space station, the atmosphere drags on anything orbiting, which requires a consistent push from an engine to counteract.
SpaceX gives Space Coast 52nd launch of the year
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Saturday from Kennedy Space Center on the 52nd successful flight of the year from the Space Coast.
The CRS-26 mission lifted off from Launch Pad 39-A on a resupply run to the International Space Station at 2:20 p.m.
A brand-new cargo Dragon spacecraft is carting up 7,700 pounds of food, scientific investigation and supplies to the station, including a pair of rollout solar arrays to help with power supply.
"Everyone is anxious to see the science kick off as soon as docking occurs," said Jeff Arend with NASA's systems engineering and integration office for the ISS.
That includes a study that will let the ISS crew grow dwarf tomatoes as part of NASA's plans to support long-term human space travel needs. A related investigation called BioNutrients-2 looks to produce on-demand nutrients by using combination of yogurt, a yeast-based beverage, and the fermented milk drink kefir.
Several student-led experiments are making the flight as well, including three payloads supported by central Florida nonprofit SpaceKids Global and the Girl Scouts of Citrus Council. One of those will investigate how brine shrimp, aka sea monkeys, behave in microgravity.
Locked and loaded
With liftoff now scheduled for 13 December, Europe’s first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite has been fuelled – a critical and extremely hazardous milestone on the road to launch. Once in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level.
China rocket taking 3 to space station to blast off Tuesday
Japan missile defense flight test successful
The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and the United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announce the successful completion of a two-week missile defense event incorporating two live fire exercises.
The event, designated Japan Flight Test Mission-07 (JFTM-07) was held in cooperation with the U.S. Navy.
The first live fire event demonstrated a successful engagement of a Standa Space belongs to humanity, come share it with China
At the UN/China space exploration and innovation partnership conference on Monday, the China National Space Administration raised eight issues in the keynote speech delivered by its deputy director Wu Yanhua, which should inspire anybody who has concerns about China's space program.
China made clear, in no ambiguous terms, its basic principles about human space exploration, namely openness Millennium Space Systems completes Missile Track Custody, Mission Payload Critical Design Review
Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing Company, completed a Critical Design Review for the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command's Missile Track Custody, or MTC, program mission payload.
"This initial CDR process marks 18 months of hard design work that is necessary to build the next generation of affordable OPIR sensors that can detect and maintain custody of emerging missile threats," sta Flocks of assembler robots show potential for making larger structures
Researchers at MIT have made significant steps toward creating robots that could practically and economically assemble nearly anything, including things much larger than themselves, from vehicles to buildings to larger robots. The new work, from MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), builds on years of research, including recent studies demonstrating that objects such as a deformable airplane wi Orion Star Trackers, Reaction Control Thrusters Tested: Artemis I Flight Day 12
On the 12th day of the Artemis I mission, team members conducted another planned test of the star trackers aboard Orion as it continued along a distant retrograde orbit of the Moon, and began another reaction control thruster flight test.
Engineers hope to characterize the alignment between the star trackers and the Orion inertial measurements units, both of which are part of the guidance,