Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: satellites

Virgin Orbit, the sister company of Virgin Galactic, is gearing up for its next space launch in June when it will put six satellites in orbit.

The mission, named “Tubular Bells, Part One” after the first album Virgin Records released in 1973, will launch satellites for the U.S. Department of Defense, Poland’s SatRevolution and the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

A modified Boeing 747–400 jet will carry the LauncherOne rocket to high altitude, then release the 70-foot, 57000-pound rocket into the air.

Read more | >

DARPA awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 million contract to provide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) payloads for the Blackjack program.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 million contract to provide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) payloads for the Blackjack program.

Blackjack is a DARPA project to demonstrate the military utility of small satellites in low Earth orbit to provide communications, missile warning and PNT. Northrop Grumman’s contract was awarded April 28, according to sam.gov.

The company will supply two payloads that broadcast a new signal that is not dependent on the Global Positioning System.

Read more | >

SAN FRANCISCO — Kleos Space is conducting a six-month test of technology for in-space manufacturing of large 3D carbon fiber structures that could be used to construct solar arrays, star shades and interferometry antennas.

The company with operations in Luxembourg, the United States and United Kingdom is best known for radio frequency reconnaissance satellites. In the background, however, Kleos has been designing and developing in-space manufacturing technology called Futrism to robotically produce a carbon-fiber I-beam with embedded fiber-optic cables that is more than 100 meters long.

“It’s something that we have linked to our roadmap for RF, because it’s something that could deploy very large antennas for RF reconnaissance,” Kleos CEO Andy Bowyer told SpaceNews. “However, it’s useful for a whole range of other applications as well that we are very keen to work with partners on. We firmly believe that manufacturing in space is the future.”

Read more | >

It can track objects the size of a golf ball traveling at up 30000 kilometers per hour in LEO.

There’s a new giant space radar in Costa Rica that can track orbital debris as small as two centimeters. It was built by LeoLabs, a company that provides commercial radar tracking services for objects in Low Earth Orbit, which has declared the site fully operational less than a year after breaking ground. LeoLabs CEO Dan Ceperley said it’s the “most advanced commercial space radar of its kind” — one that’s capable of tracking objects the size of a golf ball traveling at up 30000 kilometers per hour.

The radar can keep an eye on both active satellites and space junk, which make up the vast majority of man-made objects found in LEO. They’re also the risks LeoLabs’ customers — made up of satellite operators, defense, space and regulatory agencies, insurance and scientific institutions — want to keep tabs on.

Space junk has increasingly occupied the Earth’s orbit over the past few decades, and it’s only bound to become a bigger issue in the coming years as private companies deploy more and more massive satellite constellations. Debris flying around in space is a huge threat to the ISS and future manned missions, giving rise to the need for a company like LeoLabs. Ed Lu, the company’s co-founder, explains that “[t]he number one danger to astronauts aboard the International Space Station has been and is today the risk of orbital debris that is too small to be tracked by the US Department of Defense going through the hull.”

Read more | >

DARPA announced it has increased Lockheed Martin’s contract for satellite integration work for the Blackjack program by $27.3 million.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency increased Lockheed Martin’s contract for satellite integration work for the Blackjack program by $27.3 million, the agency announced April 22.

DARPA a year ago selected Lockheed Martin as the satellite integrator for Blackjack, a project to demonstrate a network of small satellites in low Earth orbit for military communications, missile warning and navigation.

The company had previously received a $13.1 million contract for Blackjack satellite integration work. The $27.3 million modification for Phase 2 of the program brings the total value of the contract to $40.4 million.

Read more | >

The Space Development Agency is considering buying its next 150 satellites from three different vendors.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency is considering buying its next 150 satellites from three different vendors, but that could change after the agency evaluates companies’ bids, SDA director Derek Tournear said April 14.

Speaking at the Washington Space Business Roundtable, Tournear said a request for proposals will be issued in August for the agency’s Transport Layer Tranche 1 — a network of hundreds of communications satellites in low Earth orbit projected to start launching in late 2024.

The request will be for 150 satellites but SDA has not yet decided how that order will be divvied up. “There is probably three awards for those 150 satellites, but we’re not wed to three,” Tournear said. “Three is not a magic number. I’m really interested in industry feedback when they see our acquisition strategy.”

Read more | >

Going forward, Northrop Grumman projects that starting in 2025 they will begin refueling satellites in orbit and removing orbital debris from nearby “high value” satellites, Anderson said.

Satellites could live longer lives thanks to new technology being tested by Northrop Grumman.

On Monday (April 12), Northrop Grumman Corporation and SpaceLogistics LLC (a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman) announced that their satellite servicing spacecraft, called Mission Extension Vehicle 2 (MEV-2), successfully docked to the commercial communications satellite Intelsat 10–02 (IS-10–02).

Read more | >

Two aerospace firms accomplished an industry first on Monday, as a small Northrop Grumman spacecraft docked successfully with an active Intelsat satellite to provide service and extend its life.

Intelsat’s IS-10–02 satellite is nearly 18 years old, and operating well past its expected lifespan, but the Northrop Grumman-built spacecraft called MEV-2 will add another five years of life to IS-10–02, essentially re-fueling the satellite and giving it a new engine for control.

The companies hit a milestone in the growing business of servicing satellites while in space.

Read more | >