Tag: Spire
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SpaceX Launches Ninth Transporter Mission, Deploying Over 100 Satellites
SpaceX successfully launched its ninth dedicated smallsat rideshare mission, Transporter-9, on November 11, deploying more than 100 satellites. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:49 p.m. Eastern, marking another chapter in a program that has stirred mixed reactions within the commercial space sector. The booster, having previously…
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Nanoracks aims to test habitat-building method during SpaceX satellite mission
An artist’s conception shows the deployment of hardware that would deploy a set of nanosatellites and then demonstrate a robotic metal-cutting technique for in-space habitat construction. (Nanoracks Illustration) Nanoracks says it’ll put a metal-cutting robot to work in orbit next year as part of a satellite deployment mission, marking the first in-space test of a…
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Rocket Lab sends Electron rocket into orbit, marking milestone for moon mission
Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle rises from its launch pad in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab via YouTube) Rocket Lab’s two-stage Electron rocket successfully reached Earth orbit and deployed satellites for the first time today, raising hopes for far more ambitious missions to the moon. Today’s mission, which went up from Rocket Lab’s launch complex on…
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19 spacecraft go missing after Russian weather satellite launch goes awry
A Soyuz rocket lifts off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. (Roscosmos Photo) Russia’s Meteor-M 2-1 weather satellite and 18 nanosatellites went missing today after their launch aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. Among the lost spacecraft were 10 satellites that were supposed to be…
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India’s PSLV rocket puts Spire satellites in orbit – with an assist from Spaceflight
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket wasn’t the only launch vehicle that took to the air today: India’s PSLV-C38 rocket sent an Earth-watching spacecraft called Cartosat-2E into a pole-to-pole orbit, along with 30 nanosatellites. Eight of those pint-sized satellites will be part of San Francisco-based Spire’s low-Earth-orbit constellation for tracking maritime traffic and monitoring the weather. Seattle-based…
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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…