San Francisco-based startup Astranis has purchased a dedicated launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, eschewing the less expensive “ride-share” model favored by new space companies for an exclusive mission that Astranis says will put its package of four communications satellites closer to their target orbit in a much faster amount of time.

“We’re actually using substantially less than the max capability of a Falcon 9,” Astranis CEO and founder John Gedmark explained. “This is just four small satellites that [will be] on there. So we’re actually able to use all of that extra performance to put those four satellites much closer to GEO than you would normally be able to do with with this kind of launch.”

How much faster? At least twice as fast, cutting down the time from up to six months to as little as three months. Purchasing a dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 — a first amongst space companies — also means that Astranis will have much more control over when the rocket takes off and the payload insertion orbit.

COLORADO SPRINGS – Lockheed Martin on April 4 released the technical specifications of a docking adapter that could be used by manufacturers to make satellites interoperable and easier to update on orbit with new technology.

The technical data for the Mission Augmentation Port (MAP) can be used by designers to develop their own docking adapters, said Lockheed Martin.

The company used the MAP standard to design its own docking device, called Augmentation System Port Interface (ASPIN).

UCLA scientists have discovered a new source of super-fast, energetic electrons raining down on Earth, a phenomenon that contributes to the colorful aurora borealis but also poses hazards to satellites, spacecraft and astronauts.

The researchers observed unexpected, rapid “electron precipitation” from low-Earth orbit using the ELFIN mission, a pair of tiny satellites built and operated on the UCLA campus by undergraduate and graduate students guided by a small team of staff mentors.

By combining the ELFIN data with more distant observations from NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft, the scientists determined that the sudden downpour was caused by whistler waves, a type of electromagnetic wave that ripples through plasma in space and affects electrons in the Earth’s magnetosphere, causing them to “spill over” into the atmosphere.