WASHINGTON — Italian space company D-Orbit will launch its first cubesat deployer in June on an Arianespace Vega, paving the way for an upgraded deployer in December on a SpaceX Falcon 9 capable of in-space maneuvers, a company official said May 21.
Bruno Carvalho, D-Orbit's vice president of business development, said the company hopes to launch one of its InOrbit Now (ION) propulsive cubesat deployers every two to three months after proving out the system and lining up customers.
And here's another article:
Virgin Orbit schedules its first orbital test launch this weekend – Spaceflight Now
The first orbital test flight of Virgin Orbit’s privately-developed air-launched rocket is scheduled as soon as Sunday off the coast of Southern California, the company said Wednesday.
Designed to deliver small satellites into orbit, the LauncherOne vehicle has a four-hour window Sunday opening at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT; 1700 GMT) to head into space after release from the belly of Virgin Orbit’s Boeing 747 carrier aircraft. A backup launch opportunity is available at the same time Monday.
Astronomers Are Sure These Are Two Newborn Planets Orbiting a Distant Star - Universe Today
Planet formation is a notoriously difficult thing to observe. Nascent planets are ensconced inside dusty wombs that resist our best observation efforts. But recently, astronomers have made progress in imaging these planetary newborns.
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The study is titled “ Keck/NIRC2 L’-band Imaging of Jovian-mass Accreting Protoplanets around PDS 70 .” The lead author is Jason Wang from Caltech. The study is published in The Astronomical Journal.
Editorial: A crowd in space: Tens of thousands of satellites planned for orbit
There are an estimated 2,200 satellites orbiting the Earth at present, but telecommunications companies are launching dozens of new satellites regularly in hopes of providing high-speed broadband internet access to the entire planet.
Not to be left out of the game, Amazon plans to create its own space-based internet system, Project Kuiper, with the launch of more than 3,000 satellites.
That's a lot of satellites that could fill the skies over the next decade. Now would be the time for the formation of an international organization — composed of satellite companies, scientists and government representatives — that would provide some control over how many satellites orbit the Earth.
While you're here, how about this:
Satnews Publishers: Daily Satellite News
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) updated its orbital debris rules last month for the first time since 2004. These now require satellite operators to quantify their collision risk, probability of successfully disposing spacecraft, and casualty risk of spacecraft that re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.
The topic of space sustainability as it pertains to orbital debris can be split into two main parts: 1) removal of the debris currently in orbit; and 2) debris mitigation from future launches. The new FCC rules look at the 2nd part – and understandably so, as current debris removal is associated with various challenges – and the question of “who pays for it” is made relatively easier to answer.
Scientists locate a fiery new exoplanet orbiting a 10-billion-year-old star
Amid the tapestry of exotic exoplanets , protoplanets , astral bodies, and moons scattered about the infinite reaches of the universe, the class of rare worlds scientists find most intriguing are the bloated bodies known as super-Earths , named for their enlarged size relative to our own home planet.
Simmering just outside our solar system, a hot new super-Earth has been discovered lurking in the HD 164922 planetary system roughly 72 light years off in the constellation of Hercules. This simmering exoplanet orbits a brilliant G9-type star known as Gliese 9613, a stellar body just smaller than the Sun and calculated out to be an ancient 9.6 billion years old.
One of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids has a comet-like tail | Space | EarthSky
Trojan asteroids orbit 60 degrees ahead of and behind Jupiter, in its wide orbit at 5 times Earth’s distance from the sun. Now the 1st Trojan asteroid has been found with a comet-like tail.
Astronomers use the name Trojan asteroid for all the asteroids collected at Jupiter’s 2 stable Lagrange points , 60 degrees ahead of the planet in its orbit and 60 degrees behind. They further divide them into 2 camps with the Greek camp orbiting in front of Jupiter, and the Trojan camp trailing behind. The newly discovered Trojan with a comet-tail is orbiting ahead of Jupiter. Image via Wikimedia Commons .
'Groupie' galaxies orbiting Milky Way tell us about dark matter, how galaxy formed
The research, co-led by University of Chicago Asst. Prof. Alex Drlica-Wagner in collaboration with scientists from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was published in the April edition of the the Astrophysical Journal . It relies heavily on data from the Dark Energy Survey, a groundbreaking effort to map the skies led by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Chicago.
"The Dark Energy Survey data gives us unprecedented sensitivity for the smallest, oldest, and most dark-matter-dominated galaxies," said Drlica-Wagner. "These faint galaxies can teach us a lot about how stars and galaxies form."
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