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Category: satellites

One emergent company, Virgin Orbit wants to switch from a fuel-burning upper stage to solar energy, a move that could support future human habitats on other planets.

The satellite launch company has made a name for itself with its visually striking rocket launches. Strapped to the wing of a Boeing 747 the LauncherOne rocket doesn’t need the same launch pads and infrastructure as its competitors.

Virgin Orbit has hosted two successful launches to orbit, but it’s not stopping there. CEO Dan Hart tells Inverse that “we’re developing a solar electric upper stage for our rocket right now.”

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The math is pretty basic. How many satellites are going to go up over the next decade? How many solar panels will they need? And how many are being manufactured that fit the bill? Turns out the answers are: a lot, a hell of a lot, and not nearly enough. That’s where Regher Solar aims to make its mark, by bringing the cost of space-quality solar panels down by 90% while making an order of magnitude more of them. It’s not exactly a modest goal, but fortunately the science and market seem to be in favor, giving the company something of a tailwind. The question is finding the right balance between cost and performance while remaining relatively easy to manufacture. Of course, if there was an easy answer there, someone would already be doing that.

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Intech Company is the ultimate source of the latest AI news. It checks trusted websites and collects bests pieces of AI information.

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Starlink is feeling the chill.

On Wednesday, Teslarati reported that SpaceX will likely host its second Starlink launch from the west coast of the U.S. as soon as Sunday, October 17. The mission is expected to launch 51 Starlink satellites, complete with optical interlinks that will enable the satellites to bring internet access to Earth’s poles.

It’s another moment of expansion for SpaceX’s under-construction internet constellation, designed to bring high speed and low latency access to almost anywhere in the world. The company first started signing up beta testers in mid-2020, and early reports suggested that users are receiving up to 150 megabits per second.

For the long term, SpaceX has plans for much faster access. A January 2021 presentation suggested the company’s long-term ambition is to provide speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second.

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The term, “casualty risk” doesn’t literally mean humans will be smashed by falling satellites, but there is an increasing risk of satellite collisions, which could hinder or even spell disaster for future orbital missions. And, satellites de-orbited without control could pose a danger to property or the well-being of some on the surface.

In other words, it’s time to rethink the way we dispose of satellites.

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What goes up, must come down.

Or at least, for satellites, it should.

A team of researchers completed an analysis studying the way satellites re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, including cases where parts of them survive to impact the planet, and found that the “casualty risk” exceeds a critical threshold, according to a study recently shared on a pre-print server.

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Today’s world is one big maze, connected by layers of concrete and asphalt that afford us the luxury of navigation by vehicle. For many of our road-related advancements — GPS lets us fire fewer neurons thanks to map apps, cameras alert us to potentially costly scrapes and scratches, and electric autonomous cars have lower fuel costs — our safety measures haven’t quite caught up. We still rely on a steady diet of traffic signals, trust, and the steel surrounding us to safely get from point A to point B.

“If people can use the risk map to identify potentially high-risk road segments, they can take action in advance to reduce the risk of trips they take. Apps like Waze and Apple Maps have incident feature tools, but we’re trying to get ahead of the crashes — before they happen,” says He.

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A deep model was trained on historical crash data, road maps, satellite imagery, and GPS to enable high-resolution crash maps that could lead to safer roads.

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Earth imaging and data specialist Planet Labs on Tuesday announced a new line of imagery satellites, called Pelican, as the company prepares to go public later this year.

The Pelican satellites are meant to upgrade Planet’s existing constellation of 21 SkySat satellites in orbit, with launches beginning in 2022.

“It’s higher resolution, and having more satellites in space means that you actually end up having a higher revisit capability and [Pelican is] being designed for what our users want – which is speed and near-real time understanding about what’s happening,” Planet co-founder and chief strategy officer Robbie Schingler told CNBC.

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Rocket Lab USA Incsoared higher in after-hours trading Wednesday, following an announcement that the company has been chosen to fly an experimental solar sail into space.

NASA signed on with Rocket Lab RKLB, +10.43% to demonstrate the U.S. agency’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, or ACS3. The solar sail will be launched into space to demonstrate the efficacy of a technology that could be an alternative to satellites for specific duties.

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The CEO of SES says consolidation of the satellite industry is more likely than ever to improve its overall return on investment.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The chief executive of satellite operator SES says consolidation of the satellite industry is more likely than ever to improve its overall return on investment, but that the structure of the industry might hinder such deals.

Speaking at the Satellite Innovation conference here Oct. 5 Steve Collar addressed growing perceptions that the industry is ready for a wave of deals like the unsolicited proposal by telecom magnate Patrick Drahi last week to acquire Eutelsat for $3.2 billion. While Eutelsat rejected the deal, it appeared to leave the door open for a revised, higher offer.

While not addressing that specific deal or others, Collar said he thought some kind of industry consolidation was possible. “I think it’s more likely than it’s ever been,” he said. “But, it’s been likely in the past and hasn’t happened.”

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