“Before satellite AIS came along, you’d talk to people and they’d just assume that ships were tracked wherever they went in the world. But the reality was that there were 60,000 ships out there carrying nine trillion dollars’ worth of cargo, and when the captain went over the horizon, unless he sent a signal, no-one knew where he went. That’s all changed now.”
(via BBC News - Ahoy! Your ship is being tracked from orbit)
Cool Photo of Cubesats Deployed From ISS
Japan’s four-inch FITSAT-1 orbiters were released from Japan’s Kibo laboratory on the ISS last week to (literally) start their world tour, and astronauts aboard the station captured the wee satellites being dwarfed by giant solar arrays and our own blue rock on their way to orbit.
(via Visualized: Cubesat micro-orbiters slip into space to flash Earth in Morse code — Engadget)
Satellite Crash Emphasizes Work Still To Be Done In Privatized Space Missions
For the second time this year, a commercial space freighter has docked at the International Space Station. The successful arrival of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo vessel is a fresh shot in the arm for privately funded space flight - but there’s a catch.
The mission moved forward at the expense of an Orbcomm communications satellite, which was riding in the “trunk” of the Falcon 9 rocket. An engine failure on the way up meant that the satellite was released in too low an orbit, and some industry experts think the stranded probe has now re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. (Update: Orbcomm has confirmed that the satellite has deorbited.)
The episode provides a salutary lesson for space entrepreneurs hoping to launch small satellites as secondary payloads on Falcon 9 flights.
Emerging commercial space-flight firms such as Planetary Resources, the wannabe asteroid miners, believe such ride shares will be one economic way to deploy their constellations of rock-spotting telescopes and deep-space probes. But as the name suggests, secondary payloads will take a back seat to the primary mission, SpaceX has confirmed. That’s especially so when the main mission involves approaching a crewed spacecraft like the ISS, where safety is paramount.
Privatization has introduced competition in the category of “Space Freight.” Arguably (with apologies to the shuttle program), the entire concept of “Space Freight” didn’t really exist under the NASA monopoly, since the payload was the mission itself. Meanwhile, the democratization of technology (Smartphone powered micro-satellites and the like) has increased demand for access to space.
What we are seeing now is the growing pains of an industry, where each mission serves multiple clients, and in the event of emergency, the operator has to prioritize among its many clients.
Whose insurance pays for the lost satellite, I wonder…
(via Short Sharp Science: SpaceX satellite loss is a warning for ride sharers)
Harpoon Engineered To Catch Space Junk, Push It To Burn Out On Re-Entry
Currently in a conceptual stage, the system is designed to shoot defunct satellites or other debris with a harpoon mounted on a “chaser satellite” and use a tethered propulsion pack to send the rubbish in an atmospheric descent where it’ll burn up. Since the projectile could shoot straight through targets and result in even more garbage, it’s been fashioned with a crushable portion to reduce its speed upon impact.
(via UK engineers developing harpoon that could help space junk meet a fiery end — Engadget See Also: Space junk could be hunted down by harpoon-firing satellites | Ars Technica)
NASA to Use Smartphones as Platform for Next-Gen Satellites
Consumer technology has reached a level at which it no longer makes sense for NASA to roll all of its own tech.
The idea here is to integrate cheaper, off-the-shelf components into platforms for which NASA often builds its own technology from scratch. This will drastically drive down costs for small science missions—each of the three existing PhoneSat satellites costs just $3,500—and also will allow NASA to take advantage of Silicon Valley’s rapid-refresh approach to technology development that pushes new devices and technologies into the marketplace at a torrid rate.
The two PhoneSat 1.0 models are built around Nexus One smartphones, while the single PhoneSat 2.0 model is build around a Nexus S. Each weighs less than four pounds and is roughly four inches cube. There’s not yet a set launch data for the satellites, but they are supposed to go to space sometime this year.
The PhoneSat 1.0 models will be the first into the vacuum, and once they prove they can survive there the 2.0 model will follow. Smartphones are more or less ideal technology packages for this sort of thing, as they integrate processors, open operating systems, inertial and orientation sensors, GPS receivers, high-resolution cameras, and other technologies into a compact, relatively inexpensive form factor. NASA envisions using its PhoneSats for future Earth observation missions, moon exploration initiatives, and spaceflight technology testing. It even plans to use a PhoneSat 2.0 for a heliophysics experiment sometime next year.
(via NASA’s Next Nanosatellites Will Carry HTC Smartphones | Popular Science)
Tiny Ion Thrusters Developed to Power Next Generation of Cube Sats
Right now, the two dozen CubeSats in the atmosphere are fine; they retire, float for a while, then die burning up in the atmosphere. But if we want them to stay in a higher orbit (we do), they could stay there a lot longer, potentially cluttering up the orbit, or even causing collisions.
To relieve any space congestion, Paulo Lozano, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, has created miniature engines for the CubeSats that run on ion beams. They’re small, flat squares lined with 500 microscopic tips. When the tips are hit with voltage, they emit a stream of ions, enough of which can move the CubeSat along.
If we have those, we could drive the CubeSats into satellite seppuku, driving them down into the atmosphere once they’re done, or even better, use them to pick up the remans of other CubeSats, clearing the way for more satellites.
(via Video: Penny-Sized Thrusters Could Turn Tiny Satellites Into Orbiting Garbagemen | Popular Science)
Celebrating 50 Years of Satellite Communication on the Telstar 1 Launch Anniversary
Launched on the morning of 10 July 1962 aboard a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, the 77-kilogram, solar-cell-covered sphere carried the first live transatlantic TV feed—a test signal sent between the ground stations at Andover, Maine, and Pleumeur-Bodou, France.
On 23 July, TV viewers got their first glimpse of Telstar’s capabilities when networks in North America and Europe broadcast part of a major league baseball game, followed by remarks from President John F. Kennedy. Among Telstar 1’s other firsts: the first telephone call to be relayed through space, as well as the first fax.
Air Force to Spend $3.5B to Track Space Junk
At the moment, the Air Force is in what Spence called the “Phase A to preliminary design review” for the proposed Space Fence technologies. That phase will last another couple of months, after which either Raytheon or Lockheed Martin will win the contract, and ideally, the space fence will become operational within five years.
Once up and running, the system is designed to provide satellite operators, as well as the International Space Station, with a much larger “space catalog” of known debris, as well as real-time tracking on ten times the junk as is possible today. That additional information could make it possible for satellites or the space station to be moved safely out of the way of debris that would otherwise cause an impact and probable damage.
(via Raytheon, Lockheed lock horns for Space Fence contract | Cutting Edge - CNET News)
NASA, Starved for Funding, Begins Handover of Its Deployed Assets to Private Organizations
GALEX, an ultraviolet telescope, was supposed to last two years, and it’s been cruising in low-Earth orbit for nine years now. It was up for decommissioning in 2011, but Martin and members of the telescope’s science consortium were able to stretch that out another few months.
Last November, he approached NASA’s Astrophysics Division to ask about taking on responsibility for the scope. This spring, the spacecraft was placed on standby mode and NASA gave the OK to transfer it. On Monday the space agency signed a formal agreement ceding control of the spacecraft.
“NASA sees this as an opportunity to allow the public to continue reaping the benefits from this space asset that NASA developed using federal funding,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director. “This is an excellent example of a public/private partnership that will help further astronomy in the United States.”
(via PopSci Q&A: NASA Just Gave You A Telescope. What Will You Look At First? | Popular Science)
![NASA Funding Solar-Harvesting Satellite POC:
A former NASA engineer named John Mankins, now with a company called Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, detailed his plans at a NASA innovation conference recently. The concept is called called Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array (SPS-ALPHA), and it would harvest solar energy from a perch in high Earth orbit.
[The Satellite] would consist of a modular array of movable thin-film mirrors, which could be taken into space using current cargo ships and assembled piece by piece. This would be less expensive than building a gigantic array and launching it. These curved mirrors would redirect sunlight toward an internal collection of photovoltaic panels, and the solar energy would be converted into microwaves. Then the Earth-facing portion, or the bottom of the margarita glass in the image at top, would transmit low-frequency, low-intensity waves toward Earth. At the receiving end, power plants would convert the microwave energy into electricity, adding it to the power grid.
(via NASA Invests In Satellites That Beam Power Down to Earth | Popular Science)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2ddzympvR1qgpcs1o1_500.jpg)
NASA Funding Solar-Harvesting Satellite POC:
A former NASA engineer named John Mankins, now with a company called Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, detailed his plans at a NASA innovation conference recently. The concept is called called Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array (SPS-ALPHA), and it would harvest solar energy from a perch in high Earth orbit.
[The Satellite] would consist of a modular array of movable thin-film mirrors, which could be taken into space using current cargo ships and assembled piece by piece. This would be less expensive than building a gigantic array and launching it. These curved mirrors would redirect sunlight toward an internal collection of photovoltaic panels, and the solar energy would be converted into microwaves. Then the Earth-facing portion, or the bottom of the margarita glass in the image at top, would transmit low-frequency, low-intensity waves toward Earth. At the receiving end, power plants would convert the microwave energy into electricity, adding it to the power grid.
(via NASA Invests In Satellites That Beam Power Down to Earth | Popular Science)
