Firefly Aerospace has completed a successful static fire of its Alpha booster at the Vandenberg Space Force Station. The company also announced that it is planning the inaugural launch of the new rocket on Sept. 2 from the California military base. The rideshare mission will carry a number of payloads, which are show below. Payload Purpose Company/ Organization Nation DREAM CubeSat deployer Firefly USA BSS1 (DFAST Demonstrator) Technology demonstration Benchmark Space […]
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WASHINGTON (FAA PR) – The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can now track a space launch or reentry vehicle in near-real time as it travels through the National Airspace System. This new capability increases safety for all airspace users and assists the FAA in efficiently managing air traffic during space operations.
The Space Data Integrator (SDI) prototype automates the delivery of vehicle-related telemetry data to the FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center. This vastly improves the FAA’s situational awareness of where the vehicle is as it travels to space or as it returns to the Earth. In addition to existing tools, the FAA also can use SDI to manage air traffic more efficiently as a space operation progresses and address contingencies in the event of an anomaly during a mission.
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Two three-unit (3U) CubeSats. At about a foot in length and four inches wide, these are similar in design to IceCube and the five selected heliophysics CubeSats. (Credit: NASA)
NASA officials have been providing updates this week on agency programs and missions during the 2016 Small Satellite Conference and the CubeSat Workshop that preceded it. I have pulled together summaries of their presentations drawn from Twitter. Information has come from the following Tweeters:
- Jeff Foust @jeff_foust
- David Hurst @OrbitalDave
- Hanna Steplewska @spacesurfingirl
- Augie Allen @AugieAllen
- RITSpaceExploration @RITSPEX
Enjoy!
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Eight small-sized satellites total a big bonus for science. The Edison Demonstration of Smallsat Networks (EDSN) mission was to have used a swarm of small spacecraft to carry out scientific measurements. (Credit: NASA Ames Research Center)
$22 Billion Smallsat Market Forecast
Paris, Washington D.C., Montreal, Yokohama, July 7, 2016 (Euroconsult PR) — According to Euroconsult’s latest report, Prospects for the Small Satellite Market, we are on the cusp of a major revolution for the space sector and overall space ecosystem, as more than 3,600 smallsats are expected to be launched over the next ten years, a significant increase from the previous decade.