Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX was back at the launch pad Sunday with an updated rocket to finish off a Starlink mission it tried to send up earlier this month.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10–2 mission lifted off at 1:15 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 amid cloudy skies with 22 more Starlink satellites for the company’s growing internet constellation that now numbers more than 6,100 satellites in orbit.

The launch came nine days since SpaceX last attempted to knock out the mission on June 14. That attempt had a rare scrub as the countdown clock reached 0 and the rocket was ultimately brought back from the pad to allow for last week’s ASTRA 1P satellite launch to go up instead.

The space environment is harsh and full of extreme radiation. Scientists designing spacecraft and satellites need materials that can withstand these conditions.

Hausjärvi, FINLAND— A Chinese launch of the joint Sino-French SVOM mission to study Gamma-ray bursts early Saturday saw toxic rocket debris fall over a populated area.

A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 3:00 a.m. Eastern (0700 UTC) June 22, sending the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) mission satellite into orbit.

The launch was declared successful by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) a short time after liftoff.

What can a picture from space tell you? “You’re likely to have a drought here that might lead to civil unrest.”

NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) mission. The two-hour launch window opens at 5:16 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25, for the satellite’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GOES-U satellite, the final addition to GOES-R series, will help to prepare for two kinds of weather — Earth and space weather. The GOES satellites serve a critical role in providing continuous coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including monitoring tropical systems in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This continuous monitoring aids scientists and forecasters in issuing timely warnings and forecasts to help protect the one billion people who live and work in the Americas. Additionally, GOES-U carries a new compact coronagraph that will image the outer layer of the Sun’s atmosphere to detect and characterize coronal mass ejections.

The deadline for media accreditation for in-person coverage of this launch has passed. NASA’s media credentialing policy is available online. For questions about media accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.

Liftoff of the ‘No Time Toulouse’ mission took place at 2:13 p.m. ET on Thursday (June 20).

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U (GOES-U) is set for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA ’s Kennedy Space Center.

The satellite, part of NOAA ’s GOES-R series, has undergone significant pre-launch preparations including attachment to the launch vehicle, fueling, and encapsulation. It aims to improve weather forecasting and space weather detection.

SpinLaunch was founded in 2014, and its leadership team has since raised tens of millions of dollars in funding. The company has been working with NASA, Airbus, and Cornell University, launching some of their equipment as part of testing. The tech has so far endured 10,000 Gs, “10,000 times the force of Earth’s gravity,” all per the Space.com report.

If SpinLaunch’s concept proves reliable, it could eliminate the loads of fuel that is burned to launch spacecraft. In 2016, Business Insider noted that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket used more than 900,000 pounds of propellant for each liftoff, for reference. The fuel efficiency may have improved some since then.

Continue reading “Rocket company develops massive catapult to launch satellites into space without using jet fuel: ‘10,000 times the force of Earth’s gravity’” »

As ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL scanned the skies, it detected a surge of gamma-rays emanating from the nearby galaxy M82. Shortly after this observation, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope sought any residual glow from the event but detected nothing. An international research group, with contributors from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), concluded that the burst was an extragalactic flare from a magnetar, a young neutron star known for its intense magnetic field. This finding was documented in the journal Nature.

On 15 November 2023, ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL spotted a sudden explosion from a rare object. For only a tenth of a second, a short burst of energetic gamma-rays appeared in the sky. “The satellite data were received in the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC), based on the Ecogia site of the UNIGE Astronomy Department, from where a gamma-ray burst alert was sent out to astronomers worldwide, only 13 seconds after its detection,” explains Carlo Ferrigno, senior research associate in the Astronomy Department at UNIGE Faculty of Science, PI of the ISDC and co-author of the publication. The IBAS (Integral Burst Alert System) software gave an automatic localization coinciding with the galaxy M82, 12 million light-years away. This alert system was developed and is operated by scientists and engineers from the UNIGE in collaboration with international colleagues.