Tagged: satellite

satellite You have probably seen satellite images of the planet through applications like Google Earth. These provide a fascinating view of the surface of the planet from a unique vantage point and can be both beautiful to look at and useful aids for planning. But...

From ESA’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory—one of a suite of labs based at the ESTEC technical center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands—a view from an intricate test campaign for the next generation of European weather satellites. The near infrared detector assembly of the Flexible Combined...

The German military on Tuesday launched a “space command” tasked with overseeing satellites, watching for dangerous space junk and analyzing other countries’ activities. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer launched the new operation during a visit to its base at Uedem in western Germany. The military is...

Researchers from the National Time Service Center (NTSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have proposed a new method to realize absolute calibration of multi-mode satellite navigation receiver delay. The new method can be applied to fields like navigation positioning, satellite timing, and time transfer,...

When ‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever observed passing through the solar system, was discovered in 2017, it exhibited some unexpected properties that left astronomers scratching their heads. Its elongated shape, lack of a coma, and the fact that it changed its trajectory were all...

In recent years, satellites have become smaller, cheaper, and easier to make with commercial off-the-shelf parts. Some even weigh as little as one gram. This means more people can afford to send them into orbit. Now, satellite operators have started launching mega-constellations – groups of...

  Last week, the American aerospace company Northrop Grumman and its subsidiary SpaceLogistics announced a successful test of a newly developed robotic satellite-servicing spacecraft, called Mission Extension Vehicle 2 (MEV-2). The robot craft successfully docked with a commercial communications satellite, Intelsat 10-02, on April 12,...

There’s action brewing at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s newest spaceport in the far eastern Amur Oblast near the Chinese border. Thirty-six satellites, built in a joint venture between OneWeb and Airbus, are stowed inside the nose cone of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket, preparing for a lift...

The Solar Orbiter launched on 10 February 2020 and is currently in cruise phase ahead of the main science mission, which begins November this year. While the four in situ instruments have been on for much of the time since launch, collecting science data on...

Using the Harlan J. Smith Telescope, astronomers have discovered that the star HD 47127 has a substellar companion. The newly identified object, designated HD 47127 B, appears to be a brown dwarf or a brown dwarf binary. The finding is reported in a paper published...