Lifeboat Foundation

After a successful test flight of NASA’s Artemis-1 moon mission, the space agency now turns its attention to returning Americans to the moon within two to three years. But the U.S. is not the only country with lunar ambitions. China is aggressively pursuing it own plans to land astronauts on the moon and build out a permanent base. Both countries openly talk about the need to have a military presence in space to defend against the other. Already, a dangerous cold war cat-and-mouse game involving U.S., Russian and Chinese satellites plays out every day. NBC News goes in-depth to explore the challenges in a potential battlefield that is complex, congested and contested.

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SAN FRANCISCO – EOI Space, the Earth-observation startup formerly known as Earth Observant, attracted its first major customer for ultra-high-resolution imagery drawn from a constellation of satellites destined for very low Earth orbit.

NTT Data, part of the Tokyo-based technology company NTT Group, is acquiring 2.5 percent of EOI plus exclusive rights to sell EOI satellite imagery in Japan, one of the world’s largest Earth-observation markets.

NTT Data is the first partner to sign up for priority access to EOI imagery and services. EOI plans to work with other organizations and governments across the globe, but the NTT Data contract is an important one.

The first satellite specifically designed to conduct a global survey of Earth’s surface water has taken to the skies.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite before dawn on Wednesday (Dec. 16) from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first mission to survey nearly all of the water on Earth’s surface has launched.

The international Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, known as SWOT, lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 6:46 a.m. ET on Friday. The first stage of the rocket successfully landed back on Earth at 6:54 a.m. ET.

Live coverage began on NASA’s website at 6 a.m. ET.

The mission was also China’s first liftoff of a commercially developed liquid propellant rocket.

Chinese launch company LandSpace was touted to be akin to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. They were preparing a satellite launch that could beat Musk’s company with a methane-fueled rocket, reported Bloomberg.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday, the world’s first methane-fueled expendable rocket to be launched toward orbit failed to reach its goal. Hopes were high as the mission was also China’s first liftoff of a commercially developed liquid propellant rocket.

A rocket developed by Chinese private space launch provider Landspace failed to reach orbit on Wednesday (Dec. 14), losing 14 satellites in the process.

WASHINGTON — The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution calling for a halt to one type of anti-satellite (ASAT) testing, a largely symbolic move intended to support broader space sustainability initiatives.

The resolution, introduced by the United States and several other nations, was approved by the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 7 among dozens of other resolutions on arms control and related topics with little discussion or debate. A total of 155 nations voted in favor of the resolution, with 9 voting against it and 9 others abstaining.

The resolution calls on countries to halt destructive testing of direct-ascent ASAT weapons, citing concern that such creates large amounts of debris that threaten the safety of other satellites. An example is the November 2021 ASAT test by Russia that destroyed the Cosmos 1,408 satellite, creating nearly 1,800 tracked pieces of debris and likely many more objects too small to be tracked. About a third of the tracked debris from that test was still in orbit nearly a year later.

The science of meteorology has taken tremendous strides in the past two decades thanks to a confluence of several inputs: improved computing power; better modeling of data; more observational data points ranging from the device in your hand to the satellites orbiting earth; and advanced data science applications. As recently as two decades ago, providing an accurate forecast three to four days out was considered innovative. Today a five-day forecast is accurate about 80 percent of the time. Most weather experts are predicting even more extended accuracy by 2030 with the application of artificial intelligence for numerical weather prediction output. But beyond improving accuracy, here are a few other forecasting trends to watch in 2023.

Hyper-relevant Forecasting

Just like other sets of analytics have become more tailored, or localized to the user, weather intelligence is bringing forecast relevancy to an individual organization or entity. A business can determine which risks are most significant to their operations, such as wind gusts, lightning, heavy rains, and ice accretion, and then be alerted when those risk thresholds are met. While there’s growing use among utilities, municipalities and other infrastructure decision makers, hyper-relevant forecasting is growing in other sectors. For example, by combining weather data with purchasing trends and consumer demand data, one grocery chain learned that even a small change in temperature can result in a significant shift in what people buy. The store improved its revenues by modeling this impact and managing inventory accordingly. Even sports teams are applying hyper-relevant forecasting for everything from daily stadium operations to food and beverage decisions and strategic game plays.

We still don’t have a clear picture of the Sun’s physics — but the Solar Ring could change that.

To solve this a team of astronomers proposes the Solar Ring. The Solar Ring is a fleet of three spacecraft that will all orbit around the Sun. They will be separated from each other by 120 degrees and be fitted with identical instruments. This way their overlapping fields of view will make it impossible for us to miss anything happening on the surface.

Among the many kinds of observations that the astronomers behind the Solar Ring hope to perform, one involves a technique called reverberation mapping. By carefully mapping the velocity of gas on the surface of the Sun, they can measure vibrations and pulsations. These kinds of “sunquakes” give astronomers rich information about what is happening within deeper layers, much like how earthquakes tell us about the core and mantle of the Earth.

Continue reading “A trio of satellites could take a groundbreaking 360-degree photo of the sun” »