Lifeboat Foundation

As an international relations scholar who studies space law and policy, I have come to realize what most people do not fully appreciate: Dealing with space debris is as much a national security issue as it is a technical one.

Considering the debris circling the Earth as just an obstacle in the path of human missions is naive. As outer space activities are deeply rooted in the geopolitics down on Earth, the hidden challenge posed by the debris is the militarization of space technologies meant to clean it up.

To be clear, space debris poses considerable risks; however, to understand those risks, I should explain what it is and how it is formed. The term “space debris” refers to defunct human-made objects, relics left over from activities dating back to the early days of the space age. Over time that definition has expanded to include big and small things like discarded boosters, retired satellites, leftover bits and pieces from spacecraft, screwdrivers, tools, nuts and bolts, shards, lost gloves, and even flecks of paint.

Continue reading “The Hidden Danger of Cleaning Up Our Space Junk” »

WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded satellite operator Telesat a contract to study the use of commercial buses in the agency’s experimental low-Earth-orbit constellation program known as Blackjack.

Telesat of Ottawa, Canada, is the third company to receive a study contract for Blackjack, a DARPA demonstration mission that envisions deploying 20 satellites — each carrying one or more payloads. DARPA’s goal is to find lower cost alternatives to traditional military satellites. DARPA aims to pay no more than $6 million per satellite, including launch. European satellite manufacturer Airbus Defence and Space and small satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies of Boulder, Colorado, received similar contracts over the past four weeks.

Telesat’s contract, which the company announced Nov. 27, is a 12-month study to assess the utility of Telesat buses as the company refines its plans for a constellation of roughly 300 small, broadband satellites. Telesat has yet to select a manufacturer for its satellites. Two contenders, Airbus Defence and Space and a team formed by Thales Alenia Space and Maxar Technologies, are competing to build an unspecified number of satellites. Michael Schwartz, Telesat’s senior vice president of corporate and business development said the company still plans to down select a manufacturer in the spring.

Continue reading “Telesat wins study contract for DARPA’s experimental constellation” »

There are huge multi-trillion dollar opportunities developing with Space and the further evolution of the internet.

Space launch and space satellites were already a $300 billion per year industry. Cloud Computing is a $200 billion market in 2018. Global Internet services is a $600 billion market. The Global IT market is nearing $5 trillion in size. The global Auto industry is $2 trillion in size. The Global supply chain industry is $40 trillion in size.

Space launch, Internet and communication, Internet of Things, Space mining, Space Colonization will each become future multi-trillion markets. Those that are already trillion dollar markets will become even larger.

Continue reading “Bezos and Musk Will Both be Trillionaires in the Space Internet Age” »

Ground control to major Jeff (Bezos).

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing arm, just announced a new offering aimed at satellite operators.

The news: At its annual re: Invent conference in Seattle this week, the web giant unveiled a service that lets owners of satellites rent time on Amazon-managed ground stations to send and receive data from orbit. The service, called AWS Ground Station, works in much the same way as Amazon’s well-established business for tapping computing capacity via the cloud.

Continue reading “Amazon is launching pay-as-you-go cloud computing in space” »

An unusual SpaceX launch will carry several startups’ satellites, some of which will jockey to provide dirt-cheap internet for earthbound IoT sensors.

Really?

Ethiopia has announced its intention to launch its first satellite during 2019. According to the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI) at the Addis Ababa University, the satellite is expected to be launched from China during September 2019.

The initial plans to launch the satellite were announced in 2016 at the same time the Ethiopian Council of Ministers approved the establishment of ESSTI.

Continue reading “Ethiopia to launch its first-ever satellite with China’s help” »

Location data beamed from GPS satellites are used by smartphones, car navigation systems, the microchip in your dog’s neck and guided missiles — and all those satellites are controlled by the U.S. Air Force. That makes the Chinese government uncomfortable, so it’s developing an alternative that a U.S. security analyst calls one of the largest space programs the country has undertaken.

The Beidou Navigation System will be accessible worldwide by 2020.

Satellites and rockets are getting smaller. Why not rovers, too?

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A pair of tiny experimental satellites trailing NASA’s InSight spacecraft all the way to Mars face their biggest test yet. Their mission: Broadcast immediate news, good or bad, of InSight’s plunge through the Martian atmosphere on Monday. Named WALL-E and EVE after the main characters in the 2008 animated movie, the twin CubeSats will pass within a few thousand miles (kilometers) of Mars as the lander attempts its dicey touchdown. If these pipsqueaks manage to relay InSight’s radio signals to ground controllers nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) away, we’ll know within minutes whether the spacecraft landed safely.