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Category: satellites – Page 35

Lockheed Martin ramping up small satellite production

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin is experiencing a growth spurt in an unexpected corner of its business: small satellites. While traditionally known for its expertise in GPS and giant geostationary (GEO) satellites, the company has quietly built a backlog of 100 smallsats on order from Department of Defense and intelligence customers.

“This is probably a different picture than many of you may have in our minds” about what the company does, Johnathon Caldwell, head of Lockheed Martin’s military space business, told a military conference Feb. 14.

Speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Warfare Conference in Aurora, Colorado, Caldwell said a greater focus on small satellites began with the company’s pursuit of Space Development Agency contracts. SDA is building a proliferated mesh network of satellites in low Earth orbit for the Defense Department, and unlike traditional cost-plus defense programs, the agency demands fixed-price bids from satellite manufacturers.

The Hottest Catalog of the Year: Comprehensive List of Slow-building Solar Flares

Although solar flares have been classified based on the amount of energy they emit at their peak, there has not been significant study into differentiating flares since slow-building flares were first discovered in the 1980s. Scientists have now shown that there is a significant amount of slower-type flares worthy of further investigation.

Solar flares occur when magnetic energy builds up in the Sun’s atmosphere and is released as electromagnetic radiation. Lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, flares usually reach temperatures around 10 million degrees Kelvin. Because of their intense electromagnetic energy, solar flares can cause disruptions in radio communications, Earth-orbiting satellites and even result in blackouts.

The width-to-decay ratio of a flare is the time it takes to reach maximum intensity to the time it takes to dissipate its energy.

Cabot Institute for the Environment

The short lifespan of conventional batteries means they either cannot be used or have significant drawbacks in situations where it is not feasible to charge or replace them. For example, pacemakers, satellites, high-altitude drones or even spacecraft are low-power electrical devices where long life of the energy source is needed.

What we’re doing

A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.

SpaceX to deorbit 100 older Starlink satellites

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — SpaceX plans to remove from orbit about 100 of its older Starlink satellites because of a design flaw that could cause them to fail.

In a statement Feb. 12, SpaceX said it would perform controlled descents of about 100 “early-version 1” Starlink satellites out of concerns that the spacecraft could fail in orbit and no longer be maneuver.

“These satellites are currently maneuverable and serving users effectively, but the Starlink team identified a common issue in this small population of satellites that could increase the probability of failure in the future,” SpaceX stated. The company did not elaborate on that issue or identify the specific satellites affected.

SpaceX launches billion-dollar environmental research satellite for NASA

SpaceX launched an environmental research satellite for NASA early Thursday, a nearly $1 billion spacecraft that survived multiple cancellation threats and is now poised to shed new light on climate change and the complex interplay of heat-trapping carbon, aerosols and sea life on global scales.

The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission — PACE — “will dramatically advance our understanding of the relationship between aerosols and clouds, and the global energy balance,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth sciences division. “This is one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in our ability to model the climate.”

She said PACE is “going to teach us about the oceans in the same way that Webb (the James Webb Space Telescope) is teaching us about the cosmos.” And that includes “a tremendous amount about ocean biology.”

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