Hubble needs a boost, and SpaceX has stepped up to provide it. Yesterday, NASA and SpaceX announced that they’ve teamed up through an unfunded Space Act agreement to conduct a feasibility study into whether a crewed commercial mission could boost Hubble’s orbit and extend its lifetime. Hubble: an abridged history When the Hubble space telescope […]
Commercial radio frequency (RF) sensing companies are opening their doors to the NRO in hopes of winning future data procurement contracts. Driving the news: The National Reconnaissance Office awarded six study contracts to Aurora Insight, HawkEye 360, Kleos Space, PredaSAR, Spire Global ($SPIR), and Umbra Lab. Bringing in industry These contracts are part of an […]
The UK has decided it’s ready to kickstart space junk removal missions. On Monday, the UK Space Agency announced that it had awarded two active debris removal (ADR) Phase B demo contracts to ClearSpace and Astroscale. The contracts awarded are worth £2.25M ($2.4M) and £1.7M ($1.8M), respectively. Beware that the dollar conversion may rapidly sink […]
At last, justice for the dinosaurs. Last night, NASA’s first planetary defense mission ended with a bang. Years in the making, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos. With DART, NASA hopes to test whether it would be possible to protect our pale blue dot from potential oncoming planet-killing asteroids […]
NASA is prepping for the day it may have to defend the Earth against an oncoming threat. Today, it’s taking a sci-fi approach: smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid hurtling through space to try and knock it off its course. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) has been on the long journey to its target […]
Each year, seawater in the Arctic freezes, melts, and re-freezes with the changing of the seasons. And each year, brave researchers trek out into the cold to stick poles into the snow and float buoys on the sea to measure just how thick that ice is. Why not just measure the ice thickness with satellites? […]
Starburst Ventures is launching a new early-stage fund, the company announced yesterday. The company’s new venture arm is focusing its first investments in pre-seed and seed stage startups in aerospace, defense, and aviation. Starburst 101: Starburst began its accelerator program in 2015. The face of the aerospace industry has changed a lot since then, and […]
There’s a new hyperspectral constellation concept in town. Yesterday, Planet ($PL) announced it will build and launch a hyperspectral constellation, starting next year, with the Carbon Mapper Coalition. The planned constellation is known as Tanager, named after a colorful family of birds native to South and Central America. Tanager will focus on sources of methane […]
NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently trekking through an ancient river delta on the Red Planet, searching for signs of life. As it journeys through the great rocky wasteland, here and there, the rover is taking small samples of Mars rocks a few centimeters deep and storing them in little metal tubes. But our favorite little […]
This is the third installment of our deep dive on orbital debris. Read Part One and Part Two. – Space is getting more crowded, especially in the regions where satellite operators vie for the best orbits. The density of operational satellites is increasing faster each year. And as for the debris already up there? It’s […]
This week, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) introduced the Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act on the Congress floor. The bipartisan bill is aimed at developing active debris removal (ADR) technology, with the eventual goal of removing dangerous debris objects from orbit. The debris problem: 100M+ individual pieces […]
In an attempt to get as many space operators communicating on the same platform as possible to lower collision risks in space, Slingshot Aerospace today announced that it plans to offer a version of its Beacon space situational awareness (SSA) platform for free. “We just feel a grand responsibility here, since we do have the […]
