Tag: CubeSats
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Seattle company buys big rocket for little satellites
Artist’s concept of Spaceflight Industries’ Sherpa multi-payload space tug, set for a debut mission next year. Credit: Spaceflight Industries Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries has purchased a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for launch in 2017 with a mash-up of satellites in the first such commercial arrangement for a rideshare mission on a U.S. launcher, the company announced…
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Debut launch of Long March 6 deploys 20 satellites
The first launch of China’s new Long March 6 rocket took off at 2301 GMT (7:01 p.m. EDT) from the Taiyuan space center in northern China. Credit: Chinese Ministry of Defense China’s Long March 6 rocket, fueled by a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen, successfully shot into orbit on its first mission Saturday with…
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Reserve a launch for your satellite online? Rocket Lab can make it so
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck aims to have the company’s Electron rocket blasting off from a New Zealand launch site within a year. (Credit: Rocket Lab) The CubeSat revolution has come to this: Now you can make an online reservation for a nanosatellite launch almost as easily as booking a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles. L.A.-based Rocket…
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NASA: Tracking CubeSats is easy, but many stay in orbit too long
Two shoebox-sized Planet Labs satellites deploy from a dispenser aboard the International Space Station in this image from August 2014. Credit: NASA U.S. military radars have little trouble tracking the flux of CubeSats filling orbital traffic lanes, diminishing worries that new commercial CubeSat constellations could generate collision hazards in space, according to a report issued…
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British satellites set to ride Indian rocket into space
The PSLV’s second stage is hoisted onto the rocket during stacking operations at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India’s east coast. Credit: ISRO India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is set for liftoff Friday with five satellites built in Britain to look down on Earth and test a solar sail’s ability to clean up space…
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Two ‘microprobes’ to accompany InSight lander to Mars
Mechanical engineer Joel Steinkraus and systems engineer Farah Alibay hold a full-scale mechanical mock-up of a MarCO CubeSat. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA managers have formally approved the launch of two small CubeSat-based satellites with the InSight Mars lander next year, adding an experimental data relay capability to give ground controllers news about the landing’s outcome. Hundreds…
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LightSail hailed as precursor for low-cost planetary missions
A camera aboard LightSail took this picture of the deployed solar sail. Credit: The Planetary Society Managers in charge of the privately-funded LightSail solar sail in Earth orbit said Wednesday the success of the experiment is a step toward opening up the solar system to scores of modest science probes that could explore space at…
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Video: Fourth X-37B launch highlights
This is the launch highlights reel from United Launch Alliance of the Atlas 5 rocket carrying the fourth mission of the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane. See our earlier launch coverage.
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Photos: Pad cameras capture Atlas 5 launch
The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket with the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane lifts off at 11:05 a.m. EDT from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Photo credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now See our earlier launch coverage.
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Photos: Atlas 5 sets sail to orbit
A windowless, robotic space shuttle with stubby wings, two tail fins, its belly covered with black thermal tiles, clam-shell doors that swing open to reveal a small payload bay and a solar array that unfurls for powering ultralong-duration missions rode back into orbit Wednesday on the fourth mission of the Air Force’s reusable X-37B spaceplane…