Tag Archives: satellite

Researchers in Japan have finished building the world’s first wooden satellite. Called LignoSat—a reference to lignin, wood’s chief organic polymer—the satellite represents a potential solution to the space industry’s growing debris problem.Space junk is such a pervasive problem that it’s becoming more space junk and tricking people into believing they’ve …

When space agencies launch satellites into orbit, they have to worry about more than just the satellite’s data-gathering efficacy: Cost and end-of-life are also significant concerns. It costs tens of millions of dollars to build and launch a single satellite, and when the satellite’s job is done, it needs to …

SpaceX is the world’s largest satellite operator with thousands of Starlink internet nodes in its orbital constellation, and you can add 150 more to the tally. SpaceX has informed regulators that it’s buying a satellite internet startup called Swarm. This firm focuses on so-called “nano satellites” for IoT applications, but …

  For years, satellite internet has been a last resort for people living in remote areas. SpaceX has made waves offering its new Starlink service to select regions with much higher speeds than traditional satellite connections — testers are reporting as much as 150Mbps down. Amazon thinks it can do …

  SpaceX has been launching batches of Starlink internet satellites on a regular basis since May 2019, and there are now hundreds of nodes in its megaconstellation. That provides sufficient coverage that SpaceX has started rolling out a beta test of its new satellite internet service. According to data from …

  During the height of the space race in the 1960s, the US launched a series of satellites designed to study the planet. The six Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO) spacecraft improved our understanding of Earth’s magnetic field, shutting down a few years later. However, one of those forlorn satellites known …

US, UK Accuse Russia of Testing Space-Based Both the US and the UK claim to have evidence that Russia has tested an anti-satellite weapon on July 15. The weapon test has been classified as “non-destructive,” meaning it didn’t target any other satellites. That doesn’t mean it can’t, just that the …

SpaceX is usually hyped to tell us all about the payload it’s sending to orbit, but this time it doesn’t have as much to say. The company has just completed its first launch for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which is part of the Department of Defense. The NRO is …

SpaceX was supposed to launch its Falcon 9 on a satellite deployment mission earlier this week, but the launch was scrubbed doe to wind. The second attempt in the wee hours of Thursday morning was a success, though. Not long after, SpaceX reported that EchoStar XXIII had been safely deposited …

NOAA’s GOES-16 (formerly known as GOES-R), the first spacecraft in a new series of NASA-built advanced geostationary weather satellites, has sent the first high-resolution images from its Advanced Baseline Imager. This composite color full-disk visible image of the Western Hemisphere was captured from NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite on Jan. 15, 2017. …