Rockets, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Space tourism roundup – June.4.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images related to commercial human space travel:

** Beth Moses talks about her SpaceShipTwo flight and what she is doing to prepare others for such flights:

Describe to me the experience of being in space. We all saw that picture of you staring out the window in complete awe.

It was just magic and almost indescribable.

I felt very fortunate to fly where I did and the day I did. I felt like the Earth was so beautiful, but even more so than you can describe or can be imagined. I happened to fly on a day where we had snow on the mountains in the southwestern United States. And I remember vividly that appearance of glistening white mountaintops and blue Pacific Ocean and the green of the Earth. I told someone the other day I felt like Earth was wearing her diamonds for us that day, because it was so, so glistening and sharp.

It just took my breath away. It was amazing

“The face you make when you look back on Earth from space. Our Chief Astronaut Instructor, Beth Moses, is the 571st person to fly to space and the first woman to fly on board a commercial spaceship.” – Virgin Galactic

Clash: Compare the real flight to the simulations.

Moses: The Gz [force through the head] was of a much lower duration. I reached our expected Gz on boost and re-entry, but was pleasantly surprised at how short it was. It just ramps up and then ramps off. You take a breath and realize, ‘Oh this is high G,’ and you take another breath and say, ‘Oh, this is high G.’ By the time you’ve finished your second breath, it’s done, and you’re back to normal G. The Gz felt like the centrifuge, but the Gx [force through the chest] I didn’t perceive as strongly as I did in the centrifuge. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was so happy to be going up. So Gz felt like the NASTAR centrifuge, Gx did not. Both maximums were about 3.6.

Clash: Will you fly again?

Moses: I would love to go back up, but I also want to get future astronauts up there as fast as possible. So it depends on what we still have to test, how many test flights we have and for what reasons. We’re actually still mapping that out. But I will not nominate myself. There are lots of other skill-sets and factors that need to be tested, so I will train other folks to do those tests. I’m not trying to blindly hog evaluations. But if there are evaluations that need my particular skill-set, I might fly again. We’re still working that out.

** Richard Branson remains steadfastly upbeat about Virgin Galactic’s prospects: Richard Branson: We’re at the dawn of new era of space exploration (Opinion) – Richard Branson/CNN

I said after the flight on December 13, as I stood with our pilots, Frederick “CJ” Sturckow and Mark “Forger” Stucky, that when you set off on important adventures, exceptional people come forward to join the journey — people who are consistently by your side and on your side, people who share your dreams and people who help make them reality. Reaching space has been the ultimate team effort.

It is evident that we are finally at the dawn of a new age of space exploration, which will see reusable space vehicles built and operated by commercially successful private companies, transforming our business and personal lives in ways that we have yet to comprehend fully.

Standing on the flight line, I could hear my dad in the back of my mind saying, as he often did, “Isn’t life wonderful?”

** Land Rover designed the Astronaut Edition Range Rover just for “Virgin Galactic’s Future Astronaut customers”:

** Suborbital space tourism will be a lot safer than climbing Mt. Everest, thankfully: Everest deaths: Four reasons why this climbing season went wrong – BBC News

Over the past two decades, the average annual death rate of climbers on Mount Everest has remained at about six.

But this spring, at least 10 people have already been reported dead or missing on the world’s highest peak.

This is also the season that saw a record 381 climbing permits issued by the Nepalese government.

In reality, this means about 600 people were preparing to embark on the climb, with permit holders accompanied by support staff up the mountain.

** Virgin Galactic & Blue Origin near space tourism operations. VG is currently installing the interior seating in a SpaceShipTwo rocketplane and plans to begin flying customers this year. Blue Origin expects to fly people on the New Shepard for the first time in 2019, though ticket sales have yet to begun. So suborbital space tourism may finally get off the ground this year:  Suborbital space tourism nears its make-or-break moment – The Space Review

After the Ansari X Prize was won in October of 2004, I was sure that there would be regular space tourism services available by 2008. (I lost a bet, in fact, that there would be services by then.) Here it is 15 years later and I’m still waiting to see routine flights of public citizens to the edge of space.

This is disappointing for sure but it is hardly unusual that a technology takes a lot longer than expected to reach the market.

I enjoy listening to Jonathan Strickland on the TechStuff Podcast tell captivating stories behind the development and commercialization of technologies. He explains the science and engineering in a clear and straight-forward manner while also drawing fine verbal portraits of the fascinating characters involved and vividly depicting the often bitter and complex battles among them.

Many of the technologies we take for granted today saw decades pass between the initial key invention(s) and commercial success. I just listened, for example, to a podcast about compact audio cassette tapes and another on video cassettes. (These are in a series from Strickland on the development of media starting with records and films.) While not nearly as challenging as high altitude rocket transportation, there was still a considerable gap between the initial invention of flexible audio tape in Germany in the 1930s and high-fidelity audio cassettes in the 1970s.  The first video tape recorders appeared in the 1950s but the first successful home video recorders didn’t appear until the mid-1970s.

Technological devices typically involve multiple sub-technologies that must work well together as a system. Finding the optimum combination of technologies that synergize into an affordable, practical product seldom happens on the first try. Instead an evolutionary competition occurs with the fittest combo eventually winning after a long struggle that leaves behind a trail of failed designs and bankrupted companies.

In the mid-2000s, there was at least a half-dozen companies making serious efforts at a suborbital vehicle for space tourism. There was no grand overarching roadblock that a few keen outsiders saw that the companies didn’t. Rather, each encountered particular individualized hurdles that tripped them up.

For example, Virgin Galactic could have developed a SpaceShip 1.5 vehicle that involved modest improvements to the 3-seat SpaceShipOne and starting flying within a couple of years after the XPRIZE. Burt Rutan has said he had customers requesting flights on the SpaceShipOne. Instead, VG decided to jump straight to an elaborate 8-person vehicle. Unfortunately, the company ran into tremendous difficulties in scaling up the hybrid rocket motor used on the SS1 and even today does not have a motor that can send the SS2 above 100 km, which was the altitude boundary for the XPRIZE.

XCOR made good progress on low-cost, reliable liquid-fueled rocket engines but could not raise sufficient funding to bring the Lynx spaceplane to fruition. Rocketplane Ltd.‘s design based on a converted Learjet turned out not to be viable and by the time they changed the design they were out of money. Similarly, TGV Rockets fell short of funding to build the Michelle-B, a vertical takeoff and landing rocket vehicle similar to Blue’s New Shepard.

Blue Origin had plenty of funding but, after flying a couple of prototype vehicles, the company decided to focus on developing a new liquid hydrogen propulsion system that could be used for the booster of a suborbital vehicle and also for the upper stage of an orbital launcher. A highly reusable LOX/LH2 engine is no trivial technology so there’s little surprise it took them a few years to develop.

The suborbital space tourism story is just another confirmation that a new technology needs multiple entrants, all trying their hardest to make their designs work.

So, if the SpaceShipTwo and New Shepard vehicles do start flying regularly, does that guarantee a successful space tourism business? No, of course, not. No untried business is a guaranteed success. However, there are many positive signs.

For example, several hundred people have signed up for SS2 flights and most have waited patiently for many years. Only a few percent canceled after the 2014 accident and many of these dropped out not because of safety concerns but because they were discouraged by the additional years of waiting to fly.

If 600 people each year attempt to scale Mt. Everest, despite an annual average of 6 deaths, just to brag about the ordeal they overcame, we can be sure there will be no shortage of customers willing to pay for the totally unique thrill of riding a rocket straight up to the edge of space and encountering the awesome view of a glittering cosmos above and a glistening Earth below.

** A UBS Global Research view of commercial space travel:

** Russia’s KosmoKurs (КосмоКурс) is developing a suborbital vertical takeoff and landing rocket vehicle similar to Blue Origin’s New Shepard and also intended for tourism services. Like the New Shepard, up to six passengers would ride in a capsule that detaches from a booster and returns via parachutes. The goal is to build the vehicle by 2023.

** A customer for a Circumlunar Mission offered by Space Adventures wanted his deposit back as delays grew ever longer: Space Adventures reaches settlement with would-be lunar tourist – SpaceNews.com

[Harald] McPike, an Austrian businessman and adventurer who lives in the Bahamas, filed the original suit in May 2017, seeking the return of a $7 million deposit he paid to Space Adventures for a $150 million seat on a Soyuz mission that would go around the moon, and additional damages. The defendants in the suit included Space Adventures; Tom Shelley, the company’s president; and Eric Anderson, the company’s chairman and chief executive.

According to McPike’s suit, he contacted Space Adventures in July 2012 about the possibility of flying on a mission around the moon that the company had been promoting for several years. In March 2013, he signed an agreement committing to participate in such a mission, and paid an initial deposit of $7 million towards the $150 million total price with the expectation that the mission would take place within six years.

====

Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA,
and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

Space Policy

Space policy roundup – June.3.2019

A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:

Webcasts:

** First Meeting of the 2019 NASA Advisory Council:

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine gave remarks during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) on May 30 at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. The Council meets several times a year for fact finding and deliberative sessions. Meetings are held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, as well as at NASA Centers across the country.

** Commercial Lunar Payload Services Contracts, Goddard Space Flight Center, May 31, 2019

** May 31, 2019 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

====

 

====

Safe Is Not an Option

Activism, Space Policy, SpaceCasts

The Space Show this week – June.3.2019

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

This week David Livingston is attending the National Space Society‘s annual conference – ISDC 2019 – in Washington, D.C. So there will be no Space Show webcasts until next week. 

Some recent shows:

** Sun, 06/02/2019 – Science fiction author and professional space historian, Gideon Marcus talked about his Galactic Journeys. website, “a portal to 55 years ago in science fact and fiction, covering the Space Race, the books, the movies, and the culture of the early 1960s”.

** Fri, 05/31/2019 –  Dr. Greg Matloff and C. Bangs “discussed their book, Stellar Engineering, terrestrial & possible alien megastructures & concepts for advanced civilizations outside our solar system”.

** Tue, 05/28/2019 – James Donovan talked about his new book, Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11, and about “space policy, returning to the Moon, lessons learned, space and humanity plus more”.

** Fri, 05/24/2019 – Dr. Gilbert Levin and Dr. Patricia Ann Straat talked about the “Viking Labeled Release experiment, life detection on Mars, From Mars With Love by Dr. Straat and more”.

See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston

Rockets, Space Systems

Space transport roundup – June.3.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** Lightning strikes Soyuz 2-1B rocket during ascent but launch on May 27th successful anyway:

** Russian Proton rocket launches Yamal-601 geostationary communications satellite on May 30th:

** Stratolaunch appears to be shutting down: Exclusive: Space firm founded by billionaire Paul Allen closing operations – sources – Reuters

** Sierra Nevada Corp’s patented VORTEX® rocket engine was test fired in a public demo: Ozmens’ SNC Test-fires Next-Gen Rocket Engine in Prep for U.S. Launches – SNC

SNC Vortex Engine Test
SNC Vortex engine test firing. Credits: SNC

** SNC will support upgrades to the Japanese next-gen ISS cargo vehicle: Ozmens’ Sierra Nevada Corporation to Provide Hardware for Japanese HTV-X International Space Station Missions – SNC

… HTV-X is the advanced version of H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). The spacecraft will provide supplies to the Kibō Japanese Experiment Module and the International Space Station for future servicing missions.

The HTV-X spacecraft is developed and operated by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with primary sections of the vehicle being manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO).

** Nozzle blows off during test firing of Northrop-Grumman solid fuel booster:

N-G management is downplaying the incident but I’m sure the USAF will want the problem found and fixed before the OmegA can be considered for defense payloads.

[ Update: Scott Manley analyzes the incident:

]

** An update on Gilmour Space Technologies, an Australian/Singapore company developing a SmallSat launcher with a hybrid motor propulsion system: Building a rocket in a garage to take on SpaceX and Blue Origin – CNET

GIlmour’s suborbital One Vision rocket “is slated to launch in late June”. If that goes well they will proceed with development of the orbital

… three-stage rocket dubbed “Eris,” it will blast off to low Earth orbit, dropping off small satellites 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the surface.

“Eris is a three-stage vehicle, so it has three separate stages that fire individual sections,” Gilmour explains. “We have designed it to be able to take all of the known small satellites that are being built and designed right now, into space.”

The company has started work on Eris, and completion is tentatively scheduled in for 2020.

** Rocket Crafters tests 2.5 kN Cyclone hybrid motor:

This test is the most recent demonstration of Rocket Crafters new 2.5 kN (550 lbf) Cyclone Labscale testing engine. The Cyclone Engine uses a combination of the patent pending STAR-3D (Safe, Throttleable, Affordable, Reliable, 3D-Printed) Fuel Grain and VIFFI (Vortex Flow-Field Injector) technologies. The engine was fired for five seconds at 50% throttle and performed even better than expected with a maximum thrust of 1.5 kN (340 lbf)! Notice how smooth the plume from the engine is, it is much steadier and smoother than that what would be observed from a traditional Hybrid Rocket Engine. In addition, the top view is taken from a GoPro mounted to the Oxidizer Tank for the Engine, because it is attached to the test stand any vibrations from the Engine would be seen from this view.

** Firefly Aerospace releases payload users guide for the Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV), which uses solar electric propulsion to move payloads to a desired orbit:

** A Chinese rocket company tests a thruster system:

** More about university student rocket teams:

[ Update: The team fell short of 100 km but still reached a high altitude: College Rocket-Builders Are Flying High, Even as Launch Falls a Bit Short – WSJ

But in the middle of their flights, the rockets ran into an issue and fell short of hitting the Karman Line, an international standard for the boundary between earth’s atmosphere and space at 62 miles up.

“The bottom line is, from the start, it wasn’t really about the small technical details,” said Saad Mirza, a 19-year-old Princeton University student who was the team’s technical lead. “The real fact is we beat pretty much every odd.”

After spending innumerable hours working toward getting to space and falling short, the team members weren’t upset. Oddly enough, they were giddy.

There were technical triumphs to celebrate. The second-stage ignition, they felt, was a major accomplishment. Both rockets took off “straight as an arrow,” Mr. Mirza said. And even without getting to space, the rockets still got quite high. (They are still going through data to determine the exact height.)

]

** Misc.

** SpaceX:

*** SpaceX CRS-17 Dragon leaving the ISS this morning for a splashdown in the Pacific: NASA TV Set to Air US Cargo Ship Departure from Space Station | NASA

Filled with more than 4,200 pounds of valuable scientific experiments and other cargo, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is set to return to Earth from the International Space Station Monday, June 3. NASA Television and the agency’s website will provide live coverage of the craft’s release beginning at 11:45 a.m. EDT.

Around noon, flight controllers at mission control in Houston will deliver remote commands to the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to detached Dragon from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module. Expedition 59 Flight Engineer David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency will back up the operation and monitor Dragon’s systems as it departs the orbital laboratory.

After firing its thrusters to move a safe distance away from the station, Dragon will execute a deorbit burn around 4:56 p.m. to leave orbit, as it heads for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, 202 miles southwest of Long Beach, California, at 2:55 p.m. PDT. There will be no live coverage of deorbit burn or splashdown.

A view of the splashdown target area:

The Dragon is currently the only vehicle that can return substantial amounts of cargo from the ISS: Science Results Packed for Return to Earth Aboard Dragon Monday – Space Station

*** Two launches set for June. The following dates are still “no earlier than” and the specific launch window times are not yet posted.

  • June 11: Vandenberg AFB, Pad SLC-4E – Falcon 9 with three spacecraft for the Canadian Radarsat Constellation.
  • June 22: Kennedy Space Center, Pad 39-A – Falcon Heavy with USAF STP-2 Mission with 24 military and scientific research satellites.

[ Update: A time has been released for the FH launch:

]

*** Falcon Heavy STP-2 launch system components are on site and in assembly: SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy hits milestone as final rocket parts arrive in Florida – Teslarati

*** Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 arrives at Cape for launch on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. LightSail 2 Arrives in Florida | The Planetary Society

*** The Falcon 9 booster for the launch for the 60 Starlink satellites returned to Port Canaveral last week (videos via www.USLaunchReport.com):

*** Update on the Starlink satellites: SpaceX says all 60 Starlink satellites functioning so far – SpaceNews.com

All 60 satellites — the first in a constellation that could one day number 12,000 — have deployed solar arrays, a SpaceX spokesperson said in a May 31 statement, and most are in the process of climbing from their 440-kilometer drop-off point to their 550-kilometer target orbit.  

“SpaceX continues to monitor the constellation for any satellites that may need to be safely deorbited,” the spokesperson said. “All the satellites have maneuvering capability and are programmed to avoid each other and other objects in orbit by a wide margin.”

*** Starhopper & Starship orbiter demonstrators:

**** Raptor engine being installed on the Starhopper test vehicle this weekend but just for fit checks:

From SNF:

For instance, up until recently, the company was planning to utilize Raptor SN4 for the untethered hops. However, the company has now decided to utilize this engine only for fit checks, and will instead perform the hops with SN5 – the latest Raptor to come out of SpaceX’s factory in Hawthorne, California.

SN4 arrived in Boca Chica for the fit checks on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, SN5 is already at SpaceX’s test facility in McGregor Texas for verification testing before being shipped south.

While the precise reason for the engine change is unknown, by still shipping SN4 to Boca Chica first, SpaceX will be able to ensure that the Starhopper is ready for hopping ahead of SN5’s arrival. This should help to reduce the delays caused by waiting for SN5.

Some pictures:

***** Starships may become single-stage point-to-point transports:

**** An examination of the latest iteration of the design of the Super Heavy Booster/Starship combo:  Initial BFR (Starship) is not much more powerful than Falcon Heavy | Selenian Boondocks

BFR is now no longer absurdly over-sized at all. That talking point is over. It’s easily within their demonstrated capability. Fewer staging events also helps. And landing the Super Heavy booster may be easier than landing 3 separate cores simultaneously (no one knows right now). They switched from carbon fiber to stainless steel for fabrication, but that’s probably a step in the right direction if you want the vehicle to fly realsoonnow. Hypothetically (with almost balloon tanks), stainless has the same mass fraction as a carbon fiber (which needs design knock-downs for cryogenics and oxygen, particularly with out-of-autoclave processes) and similar to SpaceX’s current aluminum-lithium alloy. In practice, it seems SpaceX is still literally hammering out the manufacturing process. They have a method that seems to work with Starhopper, but the mass fraction is terrible (built literally by a water tower company). It seems almost like Sea Dragon.

But they don’t HAVE to have extremely good mass ratio. The upper stage doesn’t HAVE to have SSTO-like capability, not at first. It just needs enough to get to orbit with significant payload, say 50 tons. Perhaps it just needs 6.5km/s. That’s also about the delta-v needed to go from the Gateway to LLO then to the lunar surface and back (well, that’s about 6.2km/s total… 5.2km/s if you’re aggressive with your burns).

*** A talk by Paul Wooster of SpaceX at the recent Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. (starts at around 00:23:00) – Getting to the Moon and Mars:

Wooster also participated in the afternoon panel session titled, Session 1b: Surface Operations on Mars (starts at around 7:05:00 into the video).

====

Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA,
and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Radio

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – June.2.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

[ Update: A satellite developed by China’s AMSAT group and the Beijing Institute of Technology ( BIT ) is set to launch this month on a Chinese commercial rocket:

From ARRL:

… the CAS-7B satellite, also designated as BP-1B, a short-lived spacecraft that will carry an Amateur Radio payload. An unusual feature of the spacecraft is its “sail ball” passive stabilization system. The 1.5-U CubeSat is attached to a 500-millimeter flexible film ball — or sail — that will offer passive “pneumatic resistance” stabilization. CAS-7B is expected to remain in orbit for up to 1 month.

The spacecraft will carry an Amateur Radio transponder and educational mission. CAMSAT is working with Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), a top aerospace school, which is providing launch support in launch of the satellite. BIT faculty and students are participating in the development and testing of the satellite, and, with CAMSAT’s help, the university has established an Amateur Radio club (call sign BI1LG). CAMSAT said many students are now members, “learning Amateur Radio satellite communication and experience[ing] endless fun.”

CAMSAT BP-1B/CAS-7B
The CAMSAT BP-1B/CAS-7B cubesat duringa thermal vacuum test with the “sail ball” deployed.

]

**  Dubai university ground station to allow students to communicate with, monitor and control SmallSats in orbit: Amity University in Dubai opens satellite ground station on campus – SatellitePro ME

The next phase of this project involves the construction of a 4U (40 cm3) CubeSat in accordance with the UAE’s Environment Vision 2030.

Amity University, Dubai has launched a satellite ground station on their campus, which will allow students to track satellites, predict weather patterns and pollution levels, as reported by Khaleej Times.

The station at Amity University is aimed at garnering the participation of students studying aerospace, electrical, electronics, computer science or nanotechnology engineering.

Commenting on the initiative, Dr Vajhat Hussain, CEO of Amity University Dubai, as quoted by the English daily, said: “The main goal of the ground station is to give students the opportunity to perform the following operations – telemetry data visualisation and storage, antenna control and positioning system, radio communication using very high frequency (VHF) and satellite data analysis. Through this initiative, students will not only learn how to read and analyse such data but also get the support they need for research projects.”

** California high school offers CubeSat program for students: Lab launches engineering students’ lofty dreams | Simi Valley Acorn

Creating satellites to explore space is no longer just for adults.

At Grace Brethren High School, a group of about 20 students have made it their mission to launch a small satellite into orbit by 2020.

Known as CubeSat, the device contains a payload that can be monitored from the ground and is equipped with small yet strong LED lights that will send satellite-operating information to the mission operations center at the Grace Brethren Space Lab, said Annabelle Hynes, an 18-year-old graduate who worked on the project.

“Being the only girl involved in the spacecraft class and working on CubeSat has been an interesting experience, and we’ve gotten to do a lot of really exciting, hands-on things with this project,” Annabelle said.

“We’re still figuring out the basics, but . . . the plan is to track the satellite from the school and communicate with it. It will be open to other organizations so they can use the data we collect.”

** University College Dublin student team building EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite: Celtic New Space: Scotland’s Clyde Space To Provide CubeSat Platform For Ireland’s EIRSAT-1 – SpaceWatch.Global

EIRSAT-1 will be fully designed, assembled, tested and operated in Ireland by staff and students at UCD. This is primarily a technology demonstration and science mission with three payloads, a gamma-ray detector, a materials science experiment and a novel spacecraft control algorithm. It will also demonstrate a low-profile UHF/VHF Antenna Deployment Mechanism. Clyde Space are providing UCD with its full set of CubeSat avionics, including a flight proven onboard computer, an attitude determination and control system and its high-performance power system products.

** Australian university team develops antenna for system to allow continuous ground contact with SmallSats in low earth orbit: New antenna system enables 24/7 connectivity to space – The Lighthouse/Macquarie University

Led by Professor Karu Esselle of the School of Engineering, the team has developed an antenna system with a steerable beam which will enable scientific data downloading from spacecrafts to labs on earth 24 hours a day.

As the first move towards rapidly growing space systems, the low-profile antenna system was designed for US company Audacy who launched the world’s first entirely Ka-band CubeSat (a type of miniaturised satellite that can be used for a variety of space applications including earth imaging, astronomy, science experiments, climate monitoring and surveillance) called Audacy Zero into space via a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket in December 2018.

Audacy, a company spun off Stanford University and based in California, is developing the world’s first commercial inter-satellite data relay network. Audacy Zero was the first iteration of a radio that will enable Audacy customers’ spacecraft to connect to this network.

“Data from your CubeSat will travel through the relay system down to earth to the internet and cloud,” explains Prof Esselle.

“Without such a space relay network, a CubeSat can be seen from a fixed ground station only for a few minutes per day and that is often not enough to download all the data collected by the CubeSat.

See also:

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-153 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • Dollar-for-Dollar Match on your ARISS Donation Thru June 17, 2019
  • Call for Nominations – AMSAT Board of Directors
  • AMSAT Field Day on the Satellites
  • Lightsail-2 Scheduled for Launch June 22 – Beacon on 437.025 MHz
  • AMSAT-EA FossaSat-1 Receives IARU Coordination
  • QO-100 meets HAM RADIO 2019 in Friedrichshafen
  • ARISS SSTV Planned Over Russia for Moscow Aviation Institute
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • Send Your Name (and callsign) to Mars
  • RS-10 Downlink Provides Unique Troubleshooting Solution
  • Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

====

The Case for Space:
How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up
a Future of Limitless Possibility

Everyone can participate in space