NASA's Roman Mission completes key optical components
Tuesday, 06 December 2022 01:23
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Engineers at Ball Aerospace, one of the industrial partners for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, have installed and aligned the element wheel assembly (pictured above) into the telescope's Wide Field Instrument. The assembly contains eight science filters, two dispersive elements (a grism and prism) and a "blank" element (used for internal calibration) that will help scientists solve so Cosmic ray counts hidden in spacecraft data highlight influence of solar cycle at Mars and Venus
Tuesday, 06 December 2022 01:23 Write a comment
Measurements by ESA's long-serving twin missions, Mars Express and Venus Express, have captured the dance between the intensity of high-energy cosmic rays and the influence of the Sun's activity across our inner Solar System.
A comparison of data from the ASPERA plasma sensor, an instrument carried by both spacecraft, with the number of sunspots visible on the surface of the Sun shows how Terran Orbital assists demonstration of 1.4 Terabyte Single-Pass Optical Downlink for Pathfinder TD3 Satellite
Tuesday, 06 December 2022 01:23 Write a comment
Terran Orbital Corporation (NYSE: LLAP), a global leader in satellite-based solutions primarily serving the aerospace and defense industries, has announced its contribution to the successful demonstration of a record-breaking 1.4-terabytes of data delivered from space to ground by an optical downlink in a single pass.
The demonstration connected the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) laser NOAA approves Maxar to provide non-earth imaging services to government and commercial customers
Tuesday, 06 December 2022 01:23 Write a comment
Maxar Technologies (NYSE:MAXR) (TSX:MAXR), provider of comprehensive space solutions and secure, precise, geospatial intelligence, has announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has modified Maxar's remote sensing license to enable the non-Earth imaging (NEI) capability for its current constellation on orbit as well as its next-generation WorldView Legion satellite Space Software provider Antaris announces launch readiness of world's first cloud-built demonstration satellite
Tuesday, 06 December 2022 01:23 Write a comment
Antaris, the software platform provider for space, says that the first-ever satellite fully conceived, designed and manufactured using the company's end-to-end software is ready for launch. Creation of the satellite, dubbed JANUS-1, involved eight organizations spanning seven countries collaborating virtually through the Antaris cloud-based platform, which features open APIs and core open source Advisory panel to examine DoD’s demand for commercial space systems
Monday, 05 December 2022 22:00 Write a comment
The Pentagon’s top research official has directed the Defense Science Board to examine the military’s growing reliance on commercial space technology and its implications.
The post Advisory panel to examine DoD’s demand for commercial space systems appeared first on SpaceNews.
Ukraine’s Promin Aerospace on track for 2023 flight test
Monday, 05 December 2022 21:39 Write a comment
Ukrainian startup Promin Aerospace remains on track to conduct the first test of its small satellite launch technology early next year, in spite of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.
The post Ukraine’s Promin Aerospace on track for 2023 flight test appeared first on SpaceNews.
NASA is testing a new robotic arm that really knows how to chill out
Monday, 05 December 2022 20:07 Write a comment
Future planetary missions could explore in extremely cold temperatures that stymie existing spacecraft, thanks to a project under development at JPL.
When NASA returns to the moon with Artemis, the agency and its partners will reach unexplored regions of the lunar surface around the South Pole, where it can get much colder at night than even on frigid Mars.
NASA capsule flies over Apollo landing sites, heads home
Monday, 05 December 2022 20:03 Write a comment
NASA's Orion capsule and its test dummies swooped one last time around the moon Monday, flying over a couple Apollo landing sites before heading home.
Op-ed | Let’s keep an open dialogue on how to protect satellites on orbit
Monday, 05 December 2022 20:00 Write a comment
The conflict in Ukraine has shined a bright light on the policy ambiguity regarding the options available to the U.S. government to protect commercial satellite operators
The post Op-ed | Let’s keep an open dialogue on how to protect satellites on orbit appeared first on SpaceNews.
NASA delivers first flight hardware to ESA for Lunar Pathfinder
Monday, 05 December 2022 19:55 Write a comment
NASA delivered the first flight hardware for the Lunar Pathfinder mission to ESA (European Space Agency), which formally accepted the instrument on Nov. 4. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, developed the instrument, a laser retroreflector array, which will test new navigation techniques for lunar missions.
NASA and ESA plan to launch Lunar Pathfinder via a future Commercial Lunar Payload Services delivery. In addition to testing navigation capabilities, Lunar Pathfinder will operate as a commercial communications relay satellite and provide communications services for exploration missions on the lunar surface.
The Lunar Pathfinder mission is led by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), and ESA arranged for the mission to provide communications services to NASA. Teams from NASA, ESA, and SSTL completed inspections when the laser retroreflector array arrived at SSTL's facility in Guildford, U.K., where it will be installed in the satellite.
Researchers say space atomic clocks could help uncover the nature of dark matter
Monday, 05 December 2022 17:09 Write a comment
Studying an atomic clock on-board a spacecraft inside the orbit of Mercury and very near to the sun might be the trick to uncovering the nature of dark matter, suggests a new study published in Nature Astronomy.
Dark matter makes up more than 80% of mass in the universe, but it has so far evaded detection on Earth, despite decades of experimental efforts. A key component of these searches is an assumption about the local density of dark matter, which determines the number of dark matter particles passing through the detector at any given time, and therefore the experimental sensitivity.
In some models, this density can be much higher than is usually assumed, and dark matter can become more concentrated in some regions compared to others.
One important class of experimental searches are those using atoms or nuclei, because these have achieved incredible sensitivity to signals of dark matter.
Artemis lunar flyby: Orion is coming home
Monday, 05 December 2022 16:20 Write a comment
Today at 17:43 CET (16:43 GMT) the European Service Module for Orion fired its main engine at less than 127 km from the Moon's surface to put the Artemis spacecraft on a collision course with Earth.
Replay: MTG-I1 pre-launch briefing
Monday, 05 December 2022 13:51 Write a comment
Video:
00:43:38
Watch the replay of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 pre-launch press briefing held on 5 December 2022. Speakers include Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes; Phil Evans, Director General of Eumetsat; Bertrand Denis, Vice President Observation and Science at Thales Alenia Space and Simon Keogh, Head of Space Applications and Nowcasting Research & Development at the UK Met Office.
MTG-I1 is scheduled to be launched on 13 December on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. It is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical
E-Space buys RF hardware developer CommAgility
Monday, 05 December 2022 13:26 Write a comment
Greg Wyler’s megaconstellation startup E-Space said Dec. 5 it plans to buy radio frequency module developer CommAgility in a $14.5 million deal.
The post E-Space buys RF hardware developer CommAgility appeared first on SpaceNews.