Lifeboat Foundation

The plan is to dispatch a swarm of satellites in the lower Earth orbit to stop Elon Musk from monopolizing the low-Earth orbit space, claims a report.

China allegedly plans to deploy a swarm of satellites in low Earth orbit to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink and offer internet services, an alternative to people worldwide.

The plan to dispatch almost 13,000 satellites to throttle Starlink exposure comes under the mysterious project, code name “GW,” according to People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) space engineering researchers.

Earlier today, Samsung announced its own solution for satellite communication on smartphones. The company unveiled the 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN) modem so phones can communicate with satellites in locations where there is no cellular network connectivity.

The company said that it aims to integrate this tech into its own Exynos chip, which is used in a lot of Samsung smartphones — but not the current flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S23. The Korean tech giant describes this tech as using “satellites and other non-terrestrial vehicles” to provide connectivity in remote areas.

The move follows Apple, which launched satellite connectivity with iPhone 14 and 14 Pro for off-grid connectivity. The company first made this tech available in the U.S. and Canada, later expanding it to France, Germany, Ireland and the U.K. Apple relies on Globalstar’s satellite network.

The space around our planet is getting cluttered. Thousands of satellites and millions of out-of-control fragments of space debris hurtle high above our heads, threatening to collide. Here are the objects that experts fear the most.

In just the past month, the goings-on in near-Earth space have twice made headlines and prompted experts to call for action. On Jan. 27, space debris researchers looked on in horror as two huge pieces of space junk ⁠— a decades-old upper stage of a Russian rocket and a long-defunct Russian satellite — came within 20 feet (6 meters) or so of each other. The incident, described as a close call “worst case scenario,” could have spawned thousands of dangerous debris fragments that would have stayed in orbit for centuries. Then, a report released on Feb. 6 revealed that in early January a mysterious Russian satellite broke apart into 85 fragments large enough to be tracked from Earth.

51 of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit on Friday (Feb. 17), acing the first of two orbital missions the company has planned for the day.

The Starlink craft rode atop a Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 2:12 p.m. EST (1912 GMT; 11:12 a.m. local California time).

WASHINGTON — When the Pentagon revealed last week that a high-flying, Chinese balloon was spotted over the United States, officials said they didn’t expect the airship would add much value to the intelligence China is already gathering through its network of spy satellites.

“Our best assessment at the moment is that whatever the surveillance payload is on this balloon, it does not create significant value added over and above what the [People’s Republic of China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low Earth orbit,” a senior defense official told reporters Feb. 2.

While it’s unclear what information the uncrewed airship gathered before the Pentagon shot it down Feb. 4, experts say balloons loitering at high altitudes can offer some advantages over satellites and drones — or could at least augment their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Or their parts, at least, which look decidedly skeletal for satellite struts.

Researchers from UNSW Sydney have analyzed millions of satellite photos to observe changes in beaches across the Pacific Ocean. The findings, published in Nature Geoscience today (Feb. 10), reveal for the first time how coastlines respond to different phases of the El-Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.

ENSO is a natural climate phenomenon that causes variations in sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean. The warming phase, known as El Niño, and the cooling phase, known as La Niña, affect weather patterns across different coastlines depending on the cycle.

Continue reading “Beach erosion: Satellites reveal how climate cycles impact coastlines” »

The five-year contract is worth up to $192 million and will provide high-resolution electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar imagery.

New information about an emerging technique that could track microplastics from space has been uncovered by researchers at the University of Michigan. It turns out that satellites are best at spotting soapy or oily residue, and microplastics appear to tag along with that residue.

Microplastics—tiny flecks that can ride ocean currents hundreds or thousands of miles from their point of entry—can harm sea life and marine ecosystems, and they’re extremely difficult to track and clean up. However, a 2021 discovery raised the hope that satellites could offer day-by-day timelines of where microplastics enter the water, how they move and where they tend to collect, for prevention and clean-up efforts.

Continue reading “Tracking ocean microplastics from space” »