Tag: Satellite
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Tethers Unlimited delivers tiny but powerful satellite transmitter for Army
The SWIFT-KTX transmitter helps tiny satellites deliver big data. (Tethers Unlimited Photo) Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited says it’s delivered the first flight unit of a K-band radio transmitter that’s designed for use on CubeSat satellites as small as a loaf of bread. The SWIFT-KTX transmitter builds upon Tethers Unlimited’s software-defined radio platform to transmit data…
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Night launch: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sends SES-12 telecom satellite into orbit
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket sends the SES-12 satellite into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (SpaceX via YouTube) News Brief: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent the SES-12 telecommunications satellite into orbit tonight in a no-drama night launch. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida came at 12:45 a.m. ET…
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SpaceX’s prototype internet satellites are good enough for gaming, Elon Musk says
A camera mounted on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket shows the deployment of two prototype Starlink satellites in February. (Elon Musk via Twitter) It’s been three months since SpaceX launched the first prototype satellites for its Starlink broadband internet network, and there’s been precious little information about what they’re up to. Until today. Responding to a…
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Next-generation GOES-17 weather satellite encounters infrared imaging glitch in orbit
An artist’s conception shows a GOES-R series satellite. (NASA Photo) Two months after its launch, the main imaging instrument on a next-generation weather satellite is experiencing problems with its cooling system. That, in turn, is hurting the Advanced Baseline Imager’s ability to capture infrared and near-infrared images for the GOES-17 satellite, which is supposed to…
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SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell sees satellites as bigger market than rockets
SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, talks about the company’s future financial frontier. (CNBC via YouTube) SpaceX is taking a commanding role in the rocket business — but Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, expects the satellite business to be more lucrative. Shotwell sized up SpaceX’s road ahead in a CNBC…
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Taking a page from Amazon playbook, Jeff Bezos says it’s ‘Day One’ for space industry
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, speaks at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington, D.C. (Via Satellite Magazine via YouTube) “Day One” isn’t just for Amazon anymore: Billionaire Jeff Bezos says that first-day feeling of being fired up about a business venture applies to Blue Origin and the commercial space industry…
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Queqiao takes flight: China launches Chang’e-4 relay satellite to moon’s far side
News Brief: China today launched a satellite that will serve as the communications relay for a future probe on the moon’s far side. The satellite, dubbed Queqiao (Chinese for “Magpie Bridge”), lifted off from the Xichang Launch Center in southwest China atop a Long March 4C rocket at 5:28 a.m. local time Monday (2:28 p.m.…
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NASA’s Rossi X-ray probe makes a quiet exit after spending 22 years in orbit
News Brief: A month after the breakup of China’s Tiangong-1 space lab, another spacecraft went to its fiery doom today with far less fanfare. Orbital assessments from the U.S. military’s Joint Space Operations Center indicate that NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer made its atmospheric re-entry at roughly 7:45 a.m. PT (14:45 GMT), more than 22…
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Bill Gates, Airbus and SoftBank invest in satellite video startup that wants to help us ‘see and understand the Earth live and unfiltered’
A graphic shows the preliminary design for satellites that Airbus is manufacturing for OneWeb. EarthNow plans to use a modified version of the same platform to beam real-time video down to Earth. (C3 Creative Code and Content GmbH Photo via Airbus) The latest spinout from Intellectual Ventures, EarthNow, says it’s coming out of stealth mode…
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Report: Probe blames Zuma spy satellite’s loss on Northrop Grumman, not SpaceX
News Brief: Investigators have tentatively concluded that January’s loss of a U.S. spy satellite code-named Zuma was due to problems with a payload adapter that was provided by the satellite’s manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, rather than the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle, The Wall Street Journal reported today. One unnamed source told the Journal that the…