Collaborate Disseminate
It was the second time’s a charm as Virgin Orbit’s airdropped LauncherOne rocket put 10 NASA CubeSat payloads into low-Earth orbit on the second attempt in less than eight months under the space agency’s Launch Services Program (LSP).Continue ReadingCa… Continue reading Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne reaches orbit on second attempt
A student-built CubeSat from the University of Michigan will investigate whether small satellites can be maintained in low Earth orbit without thrusters or propellant. Scheduled to launch from the Mojave Air and Space Port on Virgin Orbit’s Launch Demo… Continue reading CubeSat to test harnessing Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion
Howe Industries has submitted a design for a solar-powered steam rocket engine for propelling CubeSats to the National Science Foundation (NSF). With only two moving parts, the ThermaSat engine uses a thermal condenser to flash boil distilled water int… Continue reading ThermaSat design would see CubeSats propelled by jets of steam
Virgin Orbit is preparing its pilots, Cosmic Girl mothership and LauncherOne rocket for a second attempt at orbital flight, today announcing that its Launch Demo 2 mission will take place a week before Christmas. The flight follows the company’s unsucc… Continue reading Virgin Orbit gears up for its second attempt to reach space
A key challenge for any system headed up into the upper-atmosphere region sometimes called near space is communicating back down to the ground. The sensors and cameras onboard many high altitude balloons and satellites aren’t useful if the data they collect can’t be retrieved. Often times, custom antennas or beacons …read more
Researchers have managed to demonstrate quantum entanglement on a small satellite orbiting Earth. The team developed a miniaturized device that can produce pairs of photons that are inextricably linked, which could help launch a fast and secure quantum… Continue reading Quantum entanglement demonstrated on tiny CubeSat in orbit
NASA is planning to launch a tiny satellite aboard one of the most powerful rockets ever constructed, to hunt for ice hiding deep inside inky black impact craters on the Moon’s surface. The bottoms of these craters – which are located near the lunar po… Continue reading NASA’s Lunar Flashlight to hunt for water in ancient Moon craters
NASA has given the green light to a new CubeSat mission to study the giant space weather storms produced by the Sun. Slated to launch after July 1, 2023, the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) will use six toaster-oven-sized spacecraft… Continue reading NASA okays SunRISE CubeSat mission to study solar storms
On the 3rd of June 2019, a 1U CubeSat developed by students of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków was released from the International Space Station. Within a few hours it was clear something was wrong, and by July 30th, the satellite was barely functional. A number …read more
Join us on Wednesday, December 11 at noon Pacific for the Open-Source Satellite Propulsion Hack Chat with Michael Bretti!
When you look back on the development history of any technology, it’s clear that the successful products eventually reach an inflection point, the boundary between when it was a niche product