Toggle light / dark theme

ICYMI overnight: A little more than an hour after its launch window opened—the delay was due to remnant thunderstorms in the area—#SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida early on Monday morning. The rocket’s first stage made a flawless flight, and then descended to a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean and safely landed.


The company has now flown 16 missions this year.

Read more

A Chinese remote sensing satellite has captured stunning footage of a suborbital rocket launch taking place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert.

The Jilin-1 satellite was orbiting at around 535 kilometres above the Earth as the OS-X1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan at 12:10 local time (04:10 UTC) on Friday.

The video satellite managed to capture the early moments of the 200-second flight, which reached an altitude of around 35 kilometers, showing the solid-fuelled rocket quickly climbing.

Read more

Space is all the rage, so it seems. The number of small spacecraft – including satellites – being manufactured has rocketed in recent years, and future forecasts are equally explosive. The first-ever internationally agreed requirements have just been published, enabling the industry to cruise even higher.

The small satellites industry is taking off. According to a recent report by SpaceWorks1), an aerospace company focused on delivering cutting-edge flight and space technologies, 2017 showed a 205 % increase in small satellite launches compared to 2016, with a record number still awaiting launch. What’s more, forecasts for future spacecraft production, often by new entrants to the industry, look equally celestial.

But producing these spacecraft involves some very specific requirements that newcomers to the market may not be aware of. To help harmonize the sector, ISO has just published the first-ever international technical specification for small spacecraft, which states the minimum requirements that every small spacecraft needs to comply with regardless of its mission.

Read more

Satellite Constellations to Bring Global Internet Coverage (SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing,…):


In this video, we’ll be discussing global internet connectivity initiatives based in space, more specifically – low and mid-Earth orbit through the use of satellite constellations.

[0:35–2:30] Starting off we’ll discuss how these satellites will communicate with the ground and the internet providing satellites from Iridium and ViaSat, that act as a proof of concept and validate satellites as a means for internet connectivity.

[2:30–5:50] Following that we’ll take a look at, current satellite constellations in development from SpaceX, OneWeb, Boeing, and others.

[5:50–07:40] To conclude we’ll discuss, the manufacturing and economics of these satellite constellations.

Read more

The world just became a little bit safer tonight as Europe’s groundbreaking wind-monitoring satellite finally blasted into orbit — ridding the world of Michael Fish moments.

At exactly 10.20 BST the Jupiter mission control centre in French Guiana, South America, gave the final green light for lift-off following a nail-biting week which saw the launch delayed by 24 hours- ironically because of strong winds.

But with the name Aeolus, it was never going to be plain sailing for the European Space Agency’s latest Earth Observation satellite.

Read more

The US Congress wants the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to rapidly develop and demonstrate a boost-phase ICBM (and hypersonic weapon) intercept capability as soon as practicable.

Space-based laser weapons technology is one of the options.

Read more