Archive for the 'Space' Category
Experimental U.S. Air Force Space Plane Breaks Previous Record for Orbital Spaceflight
August 26th, 2019Via: Space.com: The U.S. Air Force’s X-37B space plane just broke its spaceflight-duration record. At 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT) today (Aug. 26), the robotic X-37B sailed past the program mark of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes, which was set by the previous mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle 4 (OTV-4). The current […]
LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light
August 2nd, 2019Via: Planetary Society: Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They’ve all led up to now. The Planetary Society’s crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight. Since unfurling the spacecraft’s silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during […]
Skywatcher Captures Rare Image of Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane
July 6th, 2019Via: LiveScience: Skywatcher and satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands recently caught a rare glimpse of the U.S. Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane. Vandebergh said he’d been hunting for the robotic spacecraft for months and finally managed to track it down in May. But it took a bit longer to get photos of […]
What Is This?
July 4th, 2019The first part. Any prosaic explanations for this? Do any of the many physicists, engineers, video experts reading want to take a stab at calculating the acceleration of this thing? The second part is probably some de-orbiting satellite or space junk. Via: Thirdphaseofmoon:
GPS Outage Would Cost U.S. Economy $1 Billion Per Day
June 17th, 2019Via: Ars Technica: Since becoming fully operational in 1995, Global Positioning System technology has become widely adopted in the United States and abroad. The concept of satellite-based navigation has become so essential that other world powers, including China, Russia, the European Union, India, and Japan, have all started building their own regional or global systems. […]
United Technologies, Raytheon to Combine Into Defense Giant
June 10th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: United Technologies Corp. agreed to buy Raytheon Co. in an all-stock deal, forming an aerospace and defense giant with $74 billion in sales in one of the industry’s biggest transactions ever. The new entity will be called Raytheon Technologies Corp. when the deal closes in the first half of 2020, after United Technologies […]
Trails Made by Starlink Satellites
June 7th, 2019“Please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.” I would have added: Please note that this is from 25 of the first batch of 60 satellites of a […]
NASA to Let Tourists, Film Crews Into International Space Station
June 7th, 2019Via: Independent: Nasa will allow tourists to live inside the International Space Station. The space agency plans to open the floating lab up to private astronauts as well as commercial companies, it said. That could include film crews, for instance, who could be allowed to make ads or whole films in space. The first space […]
Astronomers Concerned About Starlink Light Pollution
May 27th, 2019Well, it’s not just me. Via: Forbes: SpaceX had kept the logistics of each satellite under wraps prior to the launch, but following the launch it was revealed that each satellite had a relatively large solar panel, perfect for not only gathering but reflecting sunlight back to Earth. This means anyone looking up at the […]
Starlink: Say Goodbye to the Night Sky As You Knew It
May 25th, 2019My children and I like to look at the stars on most clear nights. There is no ambient light pollution where we are so the views are breathtaking. I’ll have to tell them to try to remember the sky as it is now, because it will soon be crisscrossed by thousands of satellites. Ironically, we’ve […]
