Lifeboat Foundation

There’s yet another new rocket launch startup throwing its hat in the ring — Astra, an Alameda-based company that’s actually been operating in stealth mode (though relatively openly, often referred to as “Stealth Space Company”) for the past three years developing and testing its launch vehicle. Astra revealed its business model and progress to date in a new feature article with Bloomberg Businessweek, detailing how it plans to use mass production to deliver rockets quickly and cheaply for small satellite orbital delivery. Astra revealed it has raised more than $100 million from investors, including Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Airbus Ventures, Canann Partners and Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff, to name a few, and it has big ambitions in terms of cost and capabilities.

Astra’s rockets are smaller than most existing launch vehicles in operation, designed to delivery up to 450 lbs of cargo to space, but with the specific mandate of doing so quickly and responsively. The company is a finalist (and the only remaining one) on DARPA’s Launch Challenge, the terms of which mandate that the winning company deploy two rockets from two different locations within a few weeks of each other. Astra is still in the running, while its erstwhile competitors have dropped out, with Virgin Orbit having voluntarily withdrawn and Vector Launch having gone out of business.

The DARPA challenge, which includes an award of $12 million for the winner, represents a growing trend in terms of defense customer needs: Fast turnaround and responsive operations for small satellite delivery. In an industry where the process of securing a launch service provider to actually flying a payload has typically taken at least six months in the best-case scenario, there’s a growing need for quicker timelines in the interest of building more redundancy and resilience into defense and reconnaissance space operations through use of networks of small satellites, versus single large geostationary satellites that are expensive to launch and more time-consuming to task.

Astra, DARPA’s rocket startup of choice, is preparing to launch satellites into orbit in record time.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation warns in a new report that the military today is not able to assess the durability of its satellites if they came under attack.

DoD plans to invest at least $100 billion in space systems over the next decade, “and we are not alone,” writes DOT&E director Robert Behler in his just released annual report for fiscal year 2019.

“We therefore must thoroughly understand how our systems will perform in space, particularly when facing man-made threats,” says the report. “Yet, the DoD currently has no real means to assess adequately the operational effectiveness, suitability and survivability of space-based systems in a representative environment.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched its fourth batch of Starlink satellites into orbit and nailed a rocket landing today (Jan. 29) following days of weather delays for the mission.

A sooty Falcon 9 rocket — which made its third flight with this launch — roared to life at 9:06 a.m. EST (1406 GMT), lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here in Florida. The rocket carried 60 more Starlink satellites for SpaceX’s growing constellation, the second such launch by the company this month. The satellites all successfully deployed about an hour after liftoff.

Update January 29th, 10:10AM ET: SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket on time this morning, deploying all 60 satellites into orbit. The rocket also performed another landing on the company’s drone ship in the Atlantic after launch. While SpaceX did catch one half of the rocket’s fairing, the other half just missed its boat.

Original story: A week after performing a crucial test flight for NASA, SpaceX is poised to launch yet another Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. This mission is tasked with sending up the latest batch of internet-beaming satellites for SpaceX, adding on to the roughly 180 satellites the company already has in orbit.

Continue reading “SpaceX successfully launches its fourth batch of internet-beaming Starlink satellites” »

According to NASA, in order for a satellite to stay in orbit with the Earth, the pull of gravity must be balanced with the object’s speed. As such, the two satellites on course for collision are travelling at an extremely fast relative velocity of 14.7 kilometres per second.

“They’re going to be colliding at an incredibly high speed. And, at that speed, it’s going to probably cause the smaller satellite to break up completely into smaller fragments. And each of those fragments becomes a piece of space debris in its own right,” Gorman told ScienceAlert.

The NASA/NIVR IRAS satellite and the NRO/USN POPPY 5B satellite (aka GGSE 4) are predicted to make a close approach on Wednesday. POPPY 5B has 18-metre-long gravity gradient booms so a 15-to-30 metre predicted miss distance is alarming

2/ On Jan 29 at 23:39:35 UTC, these two objects will pass close by one another at a relative velocity of 14.7 km/s (900km directly above Pittsburgh, PA). Our latest metrics on the event show a predicted miss distance of between 15–30 meters. pic.twitter.com/Hlb1KeQ50U

Continue reading “Two satellites could hit each other Wednesday — scientists call it ‘one of the most dangerous possible collisions’” »

DirecTV has been granted permission by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send a damaged communications satellite in danger of exploding into an emergency disposal trajectory. The Boeing-built Spaceway-1 direct-broadcast satellite suffered a “major anomaly” last month that caused severe thermal damage to its batteries and must now be moved to an orbit where it will not pose a hazard to other spacecraft.

Orbiting space debris is a major and growing hazard and there has been a great deal of effort in recent years to both clean up dead satellites and to minimize the production of more debris. This not only includes the building of tougher spacecraft that won’t shed bits and pieces but also making sure that damaged satellites are properly disposed of before they become a threat.

According to documents filed by DirecTV with the FCC, the 13,400-lb (6,080-kg) Spaceway-1, which is in a geosynchronous orbit 35,800 km (22,200 mi) above the Earth’s equator, was damaged by an unspecified event in December 2019. Telemetry from the satellite was examined by Boeing engineers who concluded that the batteries on the 702-model satellite had suffered significant and irreversible damage.

Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system can now not only receive, relay, and locate distress beacon signals, it can also respond to the SOS, sending back an acknowledgement to those awaiting rescue that their location and call for help has been received and search and rescue services are responding. The new function became operational during the 12th European Space Conference in Brussels, which ran from January 21 to 22, 2020.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have come a long way since the US Military introduced the first, Transit, in the 1960s. The technology not only revolutionized navigation to the point where anyone with a smartphone can pinpoint their location with the touch of an icon, but it’s also having an increasing impact as more functions are added to that of basic navigation.

Continue reading “ESA’s Galileo satnav system can now reply to SOS signals” »

Follow the key events of the Falcon 9 rocket’s ascent to orbit with 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket is scheduled to lift off Monday at 9:49 a.m. EST (1449 GMT) from the Complex 40 launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The Falcon 9 will head northeast from Cape Canaveral over the Atlantic Ocean to place the 60 Starlink satellites into a circular orbit around 180 miles (290 kilometers) above Earth. The satellites will use their ion thrusters to maneuver into their higher orbit for testing, before finally proceeding to an operational orbit at an altitude of approximately 341 miles (550 kilometers).