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Category: satellites – Page 126

Orbion is a four-year-old startup in Houghton, Michigan, that specializes in Hall-effect plasma thrusters for small satellites.

WASHINGTON — Small satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies announced Sept. 15 it selected Orbion Space Technology to supply the electric propulsion system for the U.S. military’s Blackjack constellation.

Blue Canyon is producing four satellites for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack program. DARPA plans to launch as many as 20 small satellites to demonstrate that a mesh network in low Earth orbit can meet military requirements at lower cost and shorter design cycles than traditional Pentagon programs.

DARPA in October 2018 selected Colorado-based Blue Canyon as one of the satellite bus suppliers for Blackjack. The agency in June 2020 awarded the company a $14.1 million contract to manufacture four satellites, with options worth $99 million for up to 20 satellites.

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Scientists analyse images over seven decades.

German and Russian scientists say they have documented the life cycle of a volcano for the first time, revealing that it has a kind of “memory”.

The volcano in question is Bezymianny, an active stratovolcano on the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia which suffered a collapse in its eastern sector back in 1956.

Photographs of helicopter overflights from Soviet times have now been analysed alongside more recent satellite drone data using state-of-the-art methods at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam.

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The FCC authorized Microsoft to perform proof-of-concept demonstrations of a service that would connect its cloud computing service Azure with a ground station the company proposed to build.

“If the demonstrations result in significant market interest, Microsoft will file an application for regular earth station authority with the International Bureau (IB) to support future commercial operations,” the company wrote in the filings.

The company’s strategy will put it in competition with Amazon, which in November 2018 launched its similar AWS Ground Station service.

Microsoft is looking to compete with Amazon with a service that connects satellites directly to a cloud computing network.

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Singapore-based blockchain data firm CyberVein has become one of 12 firms participating in the construction of China’s Hainan Wenchang International Aerospace City. Construction commenced last month, with the site previously hosting a satellite launch center. Described as “China’s first aerospace cultural and tourism city,” it will be a hub for the development of aerospace products and support services intended for use in Chinese spacecraft and satellite launch missions. The 12-million-square-meter facility will host the country’s first aerospace super-computing center, and will focus on developing 40 technological areas including big data, satellite remote sensing and high precision positioning technology. CyberVein will work alongside major Chinese firms, including Fortune 500 companies Huawei and Kingsoft Cloud, and will leverage its blockchain, artificial intelligence and big data technologies to support the development of the city’s Smart Brain Planning and Design Institute.”

Blockchain firm CyberVein is partnering with the Chinese government to build a blockchain-powered governance system for its aerospace ‘smart city.’

Listen to article.

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My latest publication in Satellite Markets and Research, with significant contribution of Ms. Zoe Shahid.

by Muhammad Furqan and Zoe Shahid

Brisbane, Australia, September 4, 2020 —Exponentially increasing numbers of announced ambitious NGSO (Non-Geo Stationary Orbit) or LEO-HTS (Lower Earth Orbit – High Throughput Satellites) Mega Constellations have been creating waves in the world of technology. Their success will not be a mere disruption to the existing system, it will be a whole new system altogether.

With regular revisions in numbers of satellites from existing players and entrance of new players, these mega constellations will redefine the dynamics of Space Race 2.0, Industry 4.0, 4th, and 5th Dimension Warfare. With the rollout of a complete extra-terrestrial network there will be multiple challenges faced by the new ecosystem. With multiple revisions of filings with FCC (Federal Communication Commission) OneWeb (Qualcomm, Virgin, Airbus) leads the race with 48,000 satellites followed StarLink of SpaceX with 42,000 and Project Kuiper of Amazon with 3300 (1st numbers, may revise with the trend of the competitors) odd and other multiple constellations of smaller numbers. Recently, Huawei also announced its arrival with China Unicom with numbers of satellites not yet publicly announced. Security Challenges.

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Fellow rocket man Elon Musk reacted with sympathy. “Sorry to hear that. Orbit is hard,” he tweeted, adding that it took his firm, SpaceX, four attempts before reaching orbit in September 2008. Branson himself “waited an hour” before getting on the phone to CEO Dan Hart. “His brain, as it does, just immediately turns to – ‘well how quickly can you try again’?” Pomerantz recalls, describing the mood in the room as the sun set in California as “a big step forward that nevertheless was nowhere near as big as we wanted it to be – we are a way better company than we were the day we did that launch, but we didn’t get to orbit.”

Back Of A Napkin

But for Pomerantz, Branson, Virgin and the watching entrepreneurial world, including competitors like SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, a larger question was answered: Could Richard Branson drop a rocket off the wing of a Virgin aircraft and call it a business?

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SpaceX gave an update on early tests of its Starlink satellite internet network, which showed speeds capable of playing online video games and streaming movies.

Starlink is the ambitious plan by Elon Musk’s company to build an interconnected network of about 12,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit. To date, SpaceX has launched about 650 of its version 1.0 satellites and is currently building a system of ground stations and user terminals to connect consumers directly to its network.

The company confirmed during the webcast of its latest launch on Monday that employees have been testing Starlink’s latency and download speeds, key measures for an internet service provider. SpaceX senior certification engineer Kate Tice said that the initial results of those tests “have been good.”

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