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Tag: Satellites

  • What Would the First Week of World War III Look Like in Space?

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    The idea of waging war in orbit is no longer a figment of science fiction. As satellite technologies and launch capabilities have rapidly advanced, military powers increasingly see space as the ultimate high ground. But if World War III really does spill off-planet, what will the outbreak look like?

    For this Giz Asks, we asked several experts how they picture the first week of World War III in space, and apparently things could get really bad, really fast. They warned that cyberattacks, strikes on satellites, and assaults on ground infrastructure would lead to global logistical chaos and debris-filled orbits.

    Scott Shackelford

    Provost professor of business law and ethics and vice chancellor for research at Indiana University-Bloomington. His areas of expertise include cyber security and privacy, international law and relations, property, and sustainability.

    Here is how I envision the first week of World War III in space.

    The first 48 hours wouldn’t start with a “bang” but likely with a “glitch.” We often talk about the Internet of Space, and just like the terrestrial web, the opening moves would be almost entirely cyber-based for purposes of plausible deniability and given the asymmetric threat.

    You’d see massive, coordinated DDoS [Distributed Denial-of-Service] attacks on ground stations and sophisticated “spoofing” of GPS signals [deliberate manipulations of signals transmitted by GPS]. Before a single kinetic weapon is launched, the goal would be to blind the adversary. Imagine the chaos on Earth: global logistics chains freeze, high-frequency trading halts, and your Uber app—along with military drone arrays—suddenly thinks it’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In other words, global chaos could quickly ensue, driving distrust and undermining confidence.

    By day three or four, we move from soft interference to hard disruption. This is where the legal and ethical “grey zones” I study become a literal battlefield. We’d likely see the use of directed-energy weapons (lasers) to “dazzle” or permanently blind reconnaissance satellites. The most contentious issue here will be the commercial sector.

    In a modern space war, companies like SpaceX are no longer bystanders; they are essential military infrastructure (SpaceX even has a ’StarShield’ infrastructure). The first week would force a series of legal questions: When does an attack on a private satellite constitute an act of war against its host nation?

    If the conflict escalates to kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles by day six or seven, we face the “Tragedy of the Space Commons” on a galactic scale. A single destroyed satellite creates a cloud of thousands of high-speed projectiles.

    In a “hot” space war, we risk the Kessler Syndrome—a chain reaction of collisions that could render specific orbits, like Low Earth Orbit (LEO), unusable for a prolonged period of time. We wouldn’t just be fighting a war; we’d be building a prison of shrapnel around our own planet. Think Wall-E, just a lot more depressing. Much of the resulting junk would burn up readily but others in GSO and otherwise could contribute to an already vexing problem.

    We are far better at creating messes in space than we are at cleaning them up, and our current international legal frameworks—like the 1967 Outer Space Treaty—are unprepared for a world where the “final frontier” becomes a shooting gallery.

    Wendy Whitman Cobb

    Space policy expert whose research focuses on the political and institutional dynamics of space policy, public opinion of space exploration, and the influence of commerce on potential space conflict.

    War in space, whether in the context of World War III or otherwise, is intimately linked to war on Earth. Nothing in space is done for space’s sake but to enable (or disable as the case may be) terrestrial operations or advantages. So if there is a World War III going on on the ground—complete with the existential threats to national survival that we might expect to accompany it—we expect similar results in outer space.

    What exactly this would look like depends on the countries involved and what space capabilities they possess. For the purposes of this question, I’ll assume that the United States, Russia, and China are all involved in the war. If this is the case, we can expect actual attacks on space assets.

    This would include kinetic attacks such as anti-satellite attacks (originating from the ground and on orbit) and non-kinetic attacks such as jamming, lasing, and blinding that would render satellites either permanently or temporarily disabled. We might also see cyber attacks on the computer systems necessary to operate space systems along with ground attacks on the terrestrial segments of space infrastructure (satellite downlink stations, launching facilities, etc.).

    The goal of such attacks would be to disrupt operations on the ground and prevent the major combatants from being able to better see what is happening, communicate, or utilize the technologically advanced kill chains that depend on space-based systems to locate and destroy ground-based targets.

    The consequences of such actions would not only be a complete disruption of space-based systems, but potentially significant damage to the space environment itself.  Kinetic attacks create dangerous debris that could then hit other satellites, disabling or destroying them. Were a nuclear anti-satellite weapon used, it would indiscriminately destroy whatever satellites were in its vicinity.

    The result of such things would be to make certain orbits or areas around Earth all but useless because of debris clouds. The danger of creating harmful debris is one factor that we believe tends to tamp down on open conflict in space, but if we’re talking about World War III, that is likely to be little use as a deterrent opening the door to attacks and reprisals that could ultimately result in rendering all space systems either useless or significantly degraded.

    Bottom line: World War III would be disastrous for those of us on Earth. It would ultimately be reflected in outer space as well.

    Peter W. Singer

    Strategist and senior fellow at the think-tank New America, professor of practice at Arizona State University, and founder and managing partner at Useful Fiction LLC, a company specializing in strategic narrative. His book Ghost Fleet explores the future of war and space.

    The initial phase of a conflict extending into space will likely involve silent battles in a realm where humanity has never before fought. Satellites—which underpin both our economies and military systems—could be targeted by peer satellites, rockets, lasers, and cyber attacks. Yet, despite the spectacular nature of orbital warfare, the ultimate victor may well be determined by two critical aspects rooted right here on planet Earth.

    Rather than “heavens above,” the actual center of gravity in space operations remains the ground stations, fiber nodes, and undersea cables that facilitate space-based data. This means that space conflict might also see conventional and special operations task forces hitting key infrastructure, “global raids” targeting the terrestrial networks that bind the stars to the mud.

    As this infrastructure is global, it might take place not just in the region of conflict, but around the world, in places like South America or East Africa or even in Antarctica. The goal is to strip away an adversary’s space-dependent advantages—GPS, precision timing, and secure comms—at the source.

    The second aspect of space warfare that may well determine the conflict is the ability to get back into space. This involves not just launch infrastructure but resilient satellite production and inventory. If you want to win in space, you will need mastery of reusable rockets and a robust logistics backbone, allowing for the rapid replenishment of satellite constellations that have been blinded or neutralized.

    The victor of the next war in space won’t necessarily be the side with the largest or most expensive satellites. It will be the one that successfully maintains its terrestrial links and orbital replenishment cadence. As such, don’t think of space as a static sanctuary; it is a dynamic maneuver space where the fight on Earth determines the conflict among the stars.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • Russian spacecraft intercept key European satellites – Tech Digest

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    Russia has launched a high-stakes campaign to intercept and shadow critical European satellites.

    Security officials have confirmed that Russian spacecraft are targeting the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over Europe. These interceptions risk compromising sensitive intelligence and could allow Moscow to manipulate or even crash orbital assets.

    The manoeuvres involve two specific Russian vessels, Luch-1 and Luch-2. These “stalker” satellites have been observed performing suspicious approaches to some of Europe’s most vital infrastructure. Luch-2 alone is known to have shadowed at least 17 different satellites.

    Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, head of the German military’s space command, described the activity as “signals intelligence business.” By hovering near Western communications hardware, Russia can harvest data from older systems that lack modern encryption.

    The threat extends beyond simple spying. Officials warn that by intercepting command data, Moscow could mimic ground operators. This would allow them to send false instructions to European thrusters, potentially knocking satellites out of their intended orbits.

    German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has labelled the escalation a “fundamental threat to us all.” He noted that Russian surveillance satellites have specifically trailed Germany’s Intelsat network, which is used by both the armed forces and various government agencies.

    This orbital aggression marks a significant shift in the Kremlin’s tactics. Analysts argue that space has become the latest frontier in Russia’s “hybrid warfare” campaign – a strategy that already includes drone incursions and the severing of undersea cables.

    While Russia, China, and the U.S. have long competed for dominance, the proximity of these latest intercepts has alarmed NATO allies. Pistorius warned that Russia now possesses the capability to blind, manipulate, or kinetically destroy Western equipment in orbit.

    The danger is not merely theoretical. Reports recently emerged that a Russian Luch satellite was destroyed in a “graveyard orbit” following a collision with space debris. Whether this was an accident or a deliberate act of destruction remains unknown.

    As the war in Ukraine continues to strain global security, the focus has shifted upward. European leaders are now calling for the development of offensive space capabilities to protect the digital infrastructure that modern society depends on.

    Via Telegraph 

    Silent Shield: How Finland’s Sensofusion is neutralising the drone threat


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    Chris Price

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  • SpaceX can deploy 7,500 more Starlink Gen2 satellites with FCC approval

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    The Federal Communications Commission has approved SpaceX’s request to deploy an additional 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites, allowing the company to launch 15,000 in all. It has also allowed SpaceX to upgrade its Gen2 satellites with “advanced form factors and cutting-edge technology,” to operate across more frequencies and to add more orbital shells to optimize coverage and performance. This approval will give the company’s fleet a boost and will allow it to offer internet and mobile services to more parts of the globe. The satellites will also enable SpaceX to offer “direct-to-cell connectivity outside the United States and supplemental coverage” within the US.

    In the United States, SpaceX has a partnership with T-Mobile, which gives its subscribers access to satellite-to-phone services. It enables subscribers to send texts and access compatible apps even in remote locations. The companies are also planning to roll out voice calls over satellite in the future.

    As Ars Technica notes, the FCC’s announcement comes after SpaceX revealed that it was moving 4,400 satellites from an altitude of 341 miles down to 298 miles to reduce the risk of collision. SpaceX originally asked for permission to deploy 29,988 second-generation Starlinks in 2020, but the FCC only granted it permission for 7,500 in 2022. Back then the commission said that it was giving SpaceX a limited approval to help maintain a safe space environment due to concerns about orbital debris.

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    Mariella Moon

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  • A NASA Space Telescope Is Falling Out of the Sky. Can This Startup Save it?

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    An Earth-orbiting NASA telescope is slowly falling out of the sky, with a 90% chance of uncontrolled reentry by the end of 2026. To avoid this risk and extend the observatory’s lifespan, NASA has tapped an Arizona-based spaceflight startup to launch a daring rescue mission.

    Katalyst Space Technologies, headquartered in Flagstaff, has received a $30 million award from NASA to give the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory an orbital boost. To that end, Katalyst is developing the “LINK” spacecraft, designed to autonomously rendezvous with Swift and shift it into a more stable orbit.

    Katalyst has less than eight months to get LINK off the ground and save Swift, with a launch deadline of June 2026. Oh, and according to a company announcement made Wednesday, it plans to launch the mission via a rocket dropped out of a plane. No biggie.

    Saving Swift from its slow demise

    The Swift observatory launched in 2004 to observe gamma-ray bursts—the most violent explosions in the known universe. Over its two decades in low-Earth orbit, Swift has gradually lost altitude, as all satellites do. But recent spikes in solar activity have increased atmospheric drag on the spacecraft, accelerating its orbital decay to a concerning rate.

    As Swift sinks back to Earth, atmospheric drag intensifies. At this rate, the observatory has a 50% chance of uncontrolled reentry by mid-2026 and a 90% chance by the end of next year, according to Katalyst. Though Swift would completely burn up in the atmosphere and pose no threat to people and property on Earth, NASA and Katalyst hope to extend its lifespan.

    Pegasus’s heroic comeback

    Katalyst has selected Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket as the launch vehicle for this rescue mission. Pegasus is an air-launched rocket, meaning it gets dropped from a carrier aircraft at 40,000 feet (12,000 meters), then freefalls for five seconds before igniting its first-stage rocket motor and ascending to orbit.

    Pegasus’s launch cadence has slowed significantly as cheaper, ground-launched rockets have become widely available. The Katalyst mission will be its first flight since 2021. According to the company, “Pegasus is the only system that can meet the orbit, timeline, and budget simultaneously.”

    Swift orbits the planet at a 20.6-degree inclination to avoid the South Atlantic Anomaly—a large weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field that exposes satellites to higher levels of radiation. Because of this, a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg would require a huge amount of propellant to reach the right orbital plane for this mission, Kieran Wilson, vice president of technology at Katalyst, told SpaceNews.

    Pegasus’s air-launch design overcomes this hurdle. And since it’s a flight-proven vehicle, it’s ready to launch on short notice.

    Once Pegasus deploys LINK, the spacecraft will approach Swift with a series of precise maneuvers known as rendezvous proximity operations, according to Katalyst. Because Swift doesn’t have docking ports or grappling fixtures for LINK to grab onto, it will use a custom-built robotic capture mechanism to attach to a feature on the body of the satellite and adjust its orbit.

    If the mission succeeds, it won’t just extend the lifespan of a highly valuable research satellite; it will demonstrate a useful new capability for NASA. Being able to execute a rapid response to orbital decay would be a key asset to the agency, helping it better maintain its fleet of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • California Startup Wants to Launch 4,000 Mirrors to Orbit. Scientists Are Alarmed

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    A California startup’s plan to launch thousands of mirrors into orbit has caused quite a stir among astronomers and wildlife experts. The company, Reflect Orbital, aims to maximize energy output from solar farms by redirecting sunlight toward them at night.

    Reflect Orbital recently applied for a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license to launch a demonstration satellite called EARENDIL-1 in April 2026. Once in orbit, the satellite will unfold a 3,600-square-foot (334-square-meter) mirror designed to direct sunlight down to targeted solar farms on Earth. This would be the first step toward the company’s goal of deploying a constellation of 4,000 such satellites by 2030.

    “The cost that this incurs not only on astronomy, but on the entire civilization—plus the ecological impacts—are, in my personal view, not worth the effort,” Siegfried Eggl, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and co-lead of the IAU’s Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky, told Gizmodo.

    Reflect Orbital did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment by the time of publication. A company spokesperson told Space.com that it intends to conduct an environmental impact assessment before building the constellation.

    Would Reflect Orbital’s plan even work?

    Reflect Orbital’s website promises that its constellation will deliver “continuous, reliable access to energy, day or night, to increase power generation.” That promise has won the backing of big-wig investors and a $1.25 million Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Air Force.

    On paper, the concept is relatively simple—like using a hand mirror to bounce a spot of sunlight onto the wall. But in practice, this approach may not be as effective as Reflect Orbital hopes, according to astronomers Michael J. I. Brown of Monash University and Matthew Kenworthy of Leiden University.

    In a recent article for The Conversation, they explain that due to the Sun’s size and distance, a reflected beam would spread out and be about 15,000 times dimmer than the midday Sun once it reaches Earth’s surface, though that’s still much brighter than the full Moon.

    “If a single 54 metre [177-foot] satellite is 15,000 times fainter than the midday Sun, you would need 3,000 of them to achieve 20% of the midday Sun. That’s a lot of satellites to illuminate one region,” Brown and Kenworthy write. Because these satellites would orbit Earth so quickly, it would take well over 4,000 to provide continuous illumination, they add.

    And that’s if everything goes according to plan, Eggl said. Imagine, for example, that a piece of space debris or a meteorite impacts one of these mirrors and causes it to tumble. “Once this thing tumbles, you basically have a gigantic lighthouse that is uncontrollably illuminating parts of the Earth,” he explained.

    The consequences of light pollution

    Darkness is a dwindling resource that astronomers fundamentally depend on. Light pollution poses an increasing threat to their research, with global levels rising roughly 10% per year since the advent of LED lights.

    “When you have mirrors that are shining even in the approximate direction of where telescopes are, the sky brightness is going to increase drastically,” Eggl explained. “It will be like having the full Moon up every night, and that will be devastating to astronomy.” This would prevent telescopes from imaging the very faint objects astronomers need to observe.

    Light pollution also threatens numerous animal species whose behavior evolved to align with natural day-night cycles. “By effectively extending daylight hours through artificial light and blurring the boundaries between day and night, light pollution interferes with the circadian rhythms, the physiology, and the behavioural patterns of countless species,” David Smith, advocacy and social change manager at invertebrate charity BugLife, told Space.com.

    Reflect Orbital’s FCC license application is still pending approval, and Eggl hopes regulators will take the scientific community’s concerns seriously. “But given what they propose, I see no clear way this cannot be extremely disruptive for all sorts of things,” Eggl said.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • WIRED Roundup: Satellites Data Leak, Cybertrucks, Politicized Federal Workers

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    Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I mean, I was talking to someone before these recent layoffs who’d worked at the CDC previously and had been pretty involved in efforts to study the impact of certain diseases or pandemics specifically on pregnant populations, and this person had told me a while ago, that entire team was gone. They didn’t have many people in place anymore who could look at particularly vulnerable populations from a health perspective, which I found pretty sad and disturbing, but now, I mean, it’s just getting so much worse. It’s getting so much worse.

    Jake Lahut: And Russell Vought seems to be quite happy about each additional version of this that keeps coming down the pike, so.

    Zoë Schiffer: Right. Okay. We’ll talk more about these federal layoffs and how they’ve affected other agencies too in our next segment. But before we go to break, I’ve got a fun and very tech bro scoop for you, Cybertrucks.

    Jake Lahut: Yeah. Honestly, I should be paying you to be on the show today, Zoë, so tell me more about it.

    Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Well, I found this story so charming because essentially our Features Director Reyhan had said, “Let’s do a photo essay of Cybertruck owners.” And I was like, ‘I volunteer as tribute. I really want to do this.” So I contacted a bunch of people, I was actually going around, and when I saw Cybertrucks, I would leave little notes on their car. Not a single person ever responded to me, I was like.

    Jake Lahut: Stalker behavior.

    Zoë Schiffer: “Okay, all right.” But eventually I got in contact with this guy who runs Cybertrucks Owners Only, which is this 50,000 person Facebook group that’s really, really active. And he, while very suspicious of the media, like many Cybertrucks owners was like, “I’m game. If you come to Palm Springs on this weekend, we can have a Cybertrucks meetup and you can go meet people, you can take photos and interview them.” I love reporting where your original thesis is completely disproven in the course of the reporting, and the Cybertrucks owners really see themselves as the victims of this campaign. They’re being spit at, they’re being targeted, people yell that they’re Nazis. And to a lot of people who I talk to, they don’t see their purchase of this car as at all political. They’re like, “I just like the car. It’s a cool car, it’s fun and all of these crazy liberal people are screaming at me all day. I have my kids in the car and they’re chasing after me calling me a Nazi.” The article came out today, there’s some really cool photos. I’m curious to hear what you thought.

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    Zoë Schiffer, Jake Lahut

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  • Something Weird Is Happening to Earth’s Magnetic Field

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    The weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field, a region over the South Atlantic where the field’s strength is significantly reduced compared to its surrounding area, has grown by an area nearly the size of the European continent over the past 11 years.

    Using data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Swarm satellites, scientists revealed that the South Atlantic Anomaly has gotten much larger since 2014. In a recent study published in Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, the team of scientists links the development to strange patterns at the boundary between Earth’s liquid layer, which lies above the solid inner core, and its rocky mantle, the layer between the crust and the outer core.

    “The South Atlantic Anomaly is not just a single block,” Chris Finlay, professor of geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “There’s something special happening in this region that is causing the field to weaken in a more intense way.”

    That’s the spot

    Earth’s magnetic field is essential to life on our planet. It protects Earth from cosmic radiation and acts as a shield against solar wind, keeping our atmosphere stable and preventing liquid water and other gases from being eroded by the stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun.

    Scientists first identified the South Atlantic Anomaly, better known as the weak spot, in the late 1950s, when the first satellites began measuring Earth’s magnetic field. Early observations revealed that radiation levels were unusually high over one particular area over the South Atlantic, which meant that the magnetic field was weaker there compared to surrounding regions.

    Swarm’s magnetic field measurements reveal changes in the weak spot. Credit: ESA

    Satellites passing over the region experience higher doses of radiation compared to other areas, which makes studying the anomaly a crucial part of maintaining the safety of space missions, according to ESA.

    “Normally we’d expect to see magnetic field lines coming out of the core in the southern hemisphere,” Finlay said. “But beneath the South Atlantic Anomaly we see unexpected areas where the magnetic field, instead of coming out of the core, goes back into the core.”

    The Swarm data revealed that one of these areas is moving westward over Africa, which is contributing to the weakening of the South Atlantic Anomaly in this region. The data also highlights two points in the northern hemisphere where Earth’s magnetic field is particularly strong, one around Canada and the other around Siberia, that have experienced varying results since Swarm began its observations.

    The strong spot around Canada has weakened, shrinking by 0.65% of Earth’s surface area, which is almost the size of India. On the other hand, the Siberian strong region has grown by 0.42% of Earth’s surface area, or about the size of Greenland.

    “When you’re trying to understand Earth’s magnetic field, it’s important to remember that it’s not just a simple dipole, like a bar magnet,” Finlay said. “It’s only by having satellites like Swarm that we can fully map this structure and see it changing.”

    ESA’s Swarm satellite constellation launched in 2013 to study the complexities of the magnetic field. The mission uses three satellites, named Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, to measure magnetic signals originating from Earth’s core, as well as the planet’s crust, oceans, and parts of its atmosphere.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data

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    That suggests anyone could set up similar hardware somewhere else in the world and likely obtain their own collection of sensitive information. After all, the researchers restricted their experiment to only off-the-shelf satellite hardware: a $185 satellite dish, a $140 roof mount with a $195 motor, and a $230 tuner card, totaling less than $800.

    “This was not NSA-level resources. This was DirecTV-user-level resources. The barrier to entry for this sort of attack is extremely low,” says Matt Blaze, a computer scientist and cryptographer at Georgetown University and law professor at Georgetown Law. “By the week after next, we will have hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, many of whom won’t tell us what they’re doing, replicating this work and seeing what they can find up there in the sky.”

    One of the only barriers to replicating their work, the researchers say, would likely be the hundreds of hours they spent on the roof adjusting their satellite. As for the in-depth, highly technical analysis of obscure data protocols they obtained, that may now be easier to replicate, too: The researchers are releasing their own open-source software tool for interpreting satellite data, also titled “Don’t Look Up,” on Github.

    The researchers’ work may, they acknowledge, enable others with less benevolent intentions to pull the same highly sensitive data from space. But they argue it will also push more of the owners of that satellite communications data to encrypt that data, to protect themselves and their customers. “As long as we’re on the side of finding things that are insecure and securing them, we feel very good about it,” says Schulman.

    There’s little doubt, they say, that intelligence agencies with vastly superior satellite receiver hardware have been analyzing the same unencrypted data for years. In fact, they point out that the US National Security Agency warned in a 2022 security advisory about the lack of encryption for satellite communications. At the same time, they assume that the NSA—and every other intelligence agency from Russia to China—has set up satellite dishes around the world to exploit that same lack of protection. (The NSA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment).

    “If they aren’t already doing this,” jokes UCSD cryptography professor Nadia Heninger, who co-led the study, “then where are my tax dollars going?”

    Heninger compares their study’s revelation—the sheer scale of the unprotected satellite data available for the taking—to some of the revelations of Edward Snowden that showed how the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ were obtaining telecom and internet data on an enormous scale, often by secretly tapping directly into communications infrastructure.

    “The threat model that everybody had in mind was that we need to be encrypting everything, because there are governments that are tapping undersea fiber optic cables or coercing telecom companies into letting them have access to the data,” Heninger says. “And now what we’re seeing is, this same kind of data is just being broadcast to a large fraction of the planet.”

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    Andy Greenberg, Matt Burgess

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  • Gizmodo Science Fair: A Spacecraft That Hunts Down Space Junk

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    Astroscale is a 2025 Gizmodo Science Fair winner for developing a satellite designed to rendezvous with space junk, with the goal of capturing it and guiding it toward a fiery grave in Earth’s atmosphere.

    The question

    Can the space industry develop new technologies that help tackle the growing problem of debris and create a more sustainable orbital environment?

    The results

    On February 18, 2024, Astroscale launched its ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) mission on board Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. The goal of the mission was to demonstrate its ability to approach, observe, and characterize a defunct spacecraft.

    Launch of ADRAS-J. © Astroscale

    The mission target was Japan’s H-2A rocket’s upper stage. This chunk of space junk has been in orbit for nearly 15 years, measuring approximately 36 feet long (11 meters) and weighing 6,613 pounds (3 tons). “Early in the program, we had a whole list of candidates,” Hisashi Inoue, chief engineer at Astroscale Japan, told Gizmodo. “We picked the target that wasn’t farthest away, and we also had some ground observations and information on the target and how it’s behaving.”

    Around three months after its launch, the ADRAS-J mission came within nearly 50 feet (15 meters) of the defunct rocket stage. With its unprecedented close approach, Astroscale became the first company to approach a large piece of space debris. It was a challenging feat, Inoue explained, as the debris is flying in space at a speed of 4 miles per second (7 kilometers per second), or faster than the speed of a bullet.

    As opposed to other rendezvous missions, the company could not communicate with the defunct rocket part. “This is junk, it’s not telling us where it is or how it’s moving,” he said. “So that makes it more complicated than just talking with a cooperative client.”

    Since its target is not equipped with GPS, the ADRAS-J spacecraft had to rely on limited ground-based observations to locate and rendezvous with the spent second stage. Despite the challenges, the satellite was successful in creeping up on its target and performing a fly-around to capture images and data of the upper stage.

    ADRAS-J served as a demonstration mission, paving the way for a follow-up that will attempt to remove the debris for real. For Astroscale’s second mission, the satellite will attempt to match the tumble rate of the wayward rocket, align itself, and dock with it. Once it’s docked, the satellite will grab the rocket with a robotic arm and lower its orbit using its thrusters before releasing it on a trajectory toward Earth’s atmosphere. The decommissioned vehicle will then burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, putting an end to its stint in orbit.

    Why they did it

    Millions of pieces of space debris are currently flying in Earth orbit, with roughly 1.2 million of them larger than 0.4 inches (1 centimeter), according to a recent report by the European Space Agency. That’s large enough to cause catastrophic damage to other spacecraft if it collides with them.

    “If you think about the terrestrial auto industry, there are all these different services performed after the car is used by the first person. It’s reused, refurbished, or recycled, and goes to second-hand use,” Inoue said. “But in space, you use [a spacecraft] once and you throw it away, but that’s not good for sustainability.”

    Nobu Okada founded Astroscale in 2013, focusing on orbital debris removal and in-orbit satellite servicing. The Tokyo-based company aims to reduce the growing amount of space junk not only by physically removing defunct spacecraft but also by extending the lifespan of satellites in space.

    “By combining all those things, I don’t think we, as Astroscale itself, can change the world’s sustainability, but we’re hoping this will kind of jump-start some of the servicing-type missions, and customers will endorse this way of thinking,” Inoue said. “Hopefully in the future, this will connect to sustainable use of space.”

    Why they’re a winner

    At a time when space startups are focused on launching more satellites, spacecraft, and rockets into orbit to cash in on the commercial use of space, Astroscale is one of the few companies promoting a sustainable practice that will allow others to coexist in the orbital environment.

    7642 Members Of Astroscale Japan
    Members Of Astroscale Japan © Astroscale

    The company is not only aiming to remove orbital debris but also to enable satellite inspection, relocation, refueling, and other life-extension services. Astroscale is pioneering sustainable use of Earth orbit in hopes that other companies follow suit and that governments worldwide set requirements for the use of space.

    What’s next

    Astroscale’s upcoming satellite is set for launch sometime in 2027, taking all the data and lessons learned from ADRAS-J and applying them to the follow-up mission.

    ADRAS-J2 is designed to actively remove the defunct Japanese rocket from orbit using Astroscale’s in-house robotic arm technology to capture it and lower its orbit. “We’re currently in the design phase,” Inoue said. “Eventually we’ll start getting more hardware in the lab and start testing it, and then start building the spacecraft next year.”

    The team

    Key members of the Astroscale team include Nobu Okada, founder and CEO; Chris Blackerby, chief operating officer; Mike Lindsay, chief technology officer; Nobuhiro Matsuyama, chief financial officer; Melissa Pane, mission and system engineer; Arielle Cohen, flight software engineer; and Gene Fujii, chief engineer.

    Click here to see all of the winners of the 2025 Gizmodo Science Fair.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • Elon Musk Is Out to Rule Space. Can Anyone Stop Him?

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    When the suit didn’t produce instant results, Musk went jingoistic. A few months earlier, in February 2014, Russia had invaded Ukraine, illegally annexing the Crimean Peninsula and triggering a global wave of condemnation against Moscow. Musk rode that wave in his successful push to get Congress and the Obama administration to wind down use of the United Launch Alliance’s signature rocket, the Atlas V, because it relied on Russian RD-180 engines. (The suit was eventually settled out of court.) The combination helped break ULA’s grip on government space launches.

    Another big leap came in 2017. SpaceX started reusing its rocket cores, which dramatically brought down the price of getting to orbit. (Eight years later, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are still the only rockets in their weight classes with reusable cores.) But nothing was more important than Mueller’s continued development of SpaceX’s Merlin engine. It became one of the most durable in aerospace history, even though, as a former employee told me, “performance-wise, it’s terrible.” Its power and efficiency are nothing special. “We didn’t have the resources to do a lot of design and analysis,” he adds. “And so we just tested the ever-loving shit out of the engine. We hot-fired it thousands of times. Now they have an engine that’s super robust.”

    Today, thanks in part to its nine reusable Merlin engines, a Falcon 9 can take a kilogram to low Earth orbit for one-third the previous cost; the Falcon Heavy, which uses 27 Merlins, drops the cost nearly in half again. Some 85 percent of Falcon 9 missions go to space with previously used first stages. In 2022, SpaceX jumped from doing around 30 launches per year to more than 60, and last year it hit 138. NASA’s space launch and human exploration efforts are now almost entirely controlled by Musk. A whole new space economy has grown up around him, one that relies on his cheap space access to get networks of small spacecraft into low Earth orbit. Take Planet Labs, the satellite imaging company. Hundreds of its spacecraft were carried by Falcon 9.

    Really, no one is even trying to catch up; they’re just trying to find niches in a Musk-dominated ecosystem. ULA is building rockets optimized to reach geostationary orbits, which are farther out, even as many of its customers follow Musk’s lead and keep their satellite constellations closer to Earth. Upstarts like Rocket Lab and Firefly are admired for their ingenuity. But their current operational rockets are tiny by comparison—capable of carrying, at most, a couple thousand pounds, versus 140,000 for the Falcon Heavy.

    “SpaceX is a cornerstone in the space industry. And then there’s other cornerstones, like Firefly. We’re very complementary to SpaceX,” says Jason Kim, the CEO of Firefly Aerospace. “It’s kind of like air, land, and sea. There’s no one-size-fits-all kind of transportation method.” (Kim’s not alone in this thinking; Firefly just went public at a valuation of $8.5 billion; Rocket Lab’s market cap is about $21 billion.)

    Jeff Bezos has the cash to compete with SpaceX. And he’s certainly been at it long enough—his rocket company, Blue Origin, started a quarter-century ago. But it has had, shall we say, competing priorities. It’s been hard at work on engines; its BE-4 engine is actually powering the first stage of ULA’s new rocket, confusingly enough. You may have seen that Blue Origin has a rocket for near-space tourism, the one that recently carried Bezos’ wife, Lauren Sánchez, and Katy Perry aloft. But the company’s big rocket, the one that’s supposed to compete with SpaceX, has flown exactly once. And when I ask Blue Origin’s rep what makes their rockets any better—or, at least, any different—from Musk’s, he tells me: “I don’t have a solid answer for you on that one.”

    China, which once seemed poised to dominate global launch, has had trouble keeping up with Musk’s rising totals, successfully launching between 64 and 68 rockets annually over the past three years. SpaceX is not only launching twice as often, it’s carrying more than 10 times the reported mass to orbit. Stoke Space, founded by Blue Origin engineers, has aerospace geeks in a frenzy, but it has yet to put a rocket on the pad. United Launch Alliance, SpaceX’s OG competitor, has a powerful new rocket—more on that in a bit—but once again, Musk is ahead. He’s working on a truly massive launcher, arguably the biggest ever constructed. Both stages are supposed to be fully reusable (which means, of course, immense cost savings), while neither stage of ULA’s Vulcan will be fully reusable. And that, according to a new report from SpaceNews Intelligence, could relegate the one-time monopolist “to niche roles in government or regional and backup contracts, assuming they survive at all.”

    II. SATELLITES

    At the end of May, at his factory in Starbase, Texas, Musk was in full Mars evangelist mode. “This is where we’re going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity,” he told his employees, “to another planet for the first time in the four-and-a-half-billion-year history of Earth.”

    But as he sketched out his soaring vision of this place cranking out 1,000 enormous Starships per year, Musk repeated a more mundane truth. No, not the part about the Starship’s uneven test record. The one about funding. “Starlink internet is what’s being used to pay for humanity getting to Mars.”

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    Noah Shachtman

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  • Everyone Thinks Elon Musk is Going to Build a SpaceX Mobile Network

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    SpaceX’s has been partnering with mobile carriers like T-Mobile to offer its satellite internet service Starlink to extend the reach of cell networks. But, according to a report from the Washington Post, the company has ambitions to be more than just a partner. Following a major purchase of wireless spectrum earlier this week, it appears everyone is expecting Elon Musk’s company to get into the wireless network business for itself.

    On Monday, it was reported that SpaceX was finalizing a deal with satellite communications company EchoStar, the parent company of Dish Network, to buy up $17 billion worth of wireless spectrum. All signs suggest that SpaceX is after that spectrum to help build out Starlink’s 5G network, with the rumored goal to move satellite connectivity for phones beyond just emergency services and access in remote locations to a full-blown mobile network.

    Musk hasn’t exactly backed away from the rumors. In an appearance on the All-In Podcast, he claimed the newly acquired spectrum would allow the company to deliver “high-bandwidth connectivity” directly from satellites to connected devices, albeit with a two-year lead time to get everything set up. “The net effect is you should be able to watch videos anywhere on your phone,” he said. That’s a big jump from Starlink’s current network offerings, which is currently only used for sending and receiving texts. The company claims it’ll offer voice calls soon. And that two-year timeline? Take it with a grain of salt, given Musk’s longstanding history of overpromising, but it does at least give some clarity as to his company’s end goal.

    As for starting up a network to compete with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, Musk didn’t rule it out when talking to the All-In guys, who are always more than happy to drink the Kool-Aid unprompted. Musk said that purchasing a mobile network provider like Verizon in the future is “not out of the question.” According to The Washington Post’s reporting, Starlink likely doesn’t have the spectrum to compete in urban environments where volume is massive and competitors have the infrastructure advantage when it comes to handling that traffic. So getting into those spaces may require an acquisition rather than building its own network.

    If Musk and SpaceX were to go that route, it’s unlikely they would face regulatory hurdles under the current administration. As WaPo pointed out, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Donald Trump, called SpaceX’s spectrum purchase a “potential game changer” for mobile networks. You’re probably not going to see an in-depth review of potential antitrust concerns when the top cop on the beat has pom-poms in his hands.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • GHGSat Unveils Carbon Dioxide Plume Images From Vanguard, the World’s First Commercial Satellite That Pinpoints CO2 to Individual Facilities

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    The carbon dioxide plume, the first shared by GHGSat, was detected from a power-generating station, with an estimated rate of 12Mt of CO2 per year.


    BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 14, 2024 (Newswire.com)
    –
    GHGSat, the global leader in satellite emissions monitoring, shared high-resolution images from Vanguard, the world’s first commercial satellite designed to trace carbon dioxide to individual industrial facilities, for the first time at COP29.

    The carbon dioxide plume was detected from a power-generating station, with an estimated rate of 12 Mt of CO2 per year.

    Released just as the international climate community convenes in Baku for the annual UN climate conference, the data marks a transformation in the way carbon dioxide emissions are monitored, reported, mitigated, and traded. 

    Recent research has shown that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are now 8% higher than 2015 levels, when the Paris Agreement that set landmark reductions targets for 2030 was first negotiated. Data like the observations from Vanguard, which zooms in to identify where exactly leaks originate, will be instrumental in pinpointing the sources and rates of those emissions, so that they can be effectively quantified and addressed. 

    “This detection is a critical first step toward a new era in monitoring emissions from space,” said Stephane Germain, Founder and CEO of GHGSat. “Ultimately, the insights generated by Vanguard will empower industry operators and government regulators with precise data required to address carbon dioxide emissions, guiding the way to the ambitious emissions reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.” 

    GHGSat C-10, known as Vanguard, was launched in 2023, joining GHGSat’s constellation of 11 methane-sensing satellites as the first of a new carbon-detecting fleet that GHGSat will put into orbit over the coming years. Data from the satellite will enable the standardized measurement of greenhouse gas emissions at sites from carbon-intensive industries, such as steel mills, cement plants, and oil & gas facilities, anywhere in the world. High-resolution CO2 data will also improve the accuracy of country-level emissions inventories and the Global Stocktake, and build confidence in the global carbon trading market, estimated to be approximately $1 trillion as it continues to develop.

    GHGSat pioneered industrial greenhouse gas emissions monitoring from space in 2016, building a fleet of high-resolution satellites capable of tracing greenhouse gas emissions down to 25m—the area of an Olympic-sized swimming pool—and capturing methane emissions as small as 100 kg/hour at unmatched near-daily frequency. 

    Today, GHGSat serves as a trusted partner to the United Nations, NASA, the European Space Agency, and the governments of the United States, Canada and Great Britain, as well as multinational companies in carbon-intensive industries. In 2023 alone, GHGSat’s constellation made over 3 million measurements across 85 countries. Since the beginning of GHGSat’s journey, data from its satellite constellation has enabled mitigation of methane emissions equivalent to the annual emissions of nearly 3.5 million gasoline-powered cars on U.S. roads.

    Source: GHGSat

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  • GHGSat Announces Rapid Expansion, Near-Doubling Its Fleet of Methane Emissions-Monitoring Satellites by 2026

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    This sharp growth will allow GHGSat’s pioneering constellation—already the world’s largest collection of satellites dedicated to monitoring greenhouse gases—to revisit industrial sites to detect methane emissions on a daily cadence around the world.


    BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 11, 2024 (Newswire.com)
    –
    GHGSat, the global leader in satellite emissions monitoring, will rapidly expand its satellite constellation through the launch of nine new satellites, near-doubling its fleet of methane monitoring satellites by the end of 2026.

    This sharp growth will allow GHGSat’s pioneering constellation—already the world’s largest collection of satellites dedicated to monitoring greenhouse gases—to revisit industrial sites to detect methane emissions on a daily cadence around the world.

    As the world gathers for COP29 in Baku, it is increasingly clear that tackling methane emissions is one of the fastest levers the world has to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius targeted in the Paris Agreement. Because methane has a warming effect roughly 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, reducing its levels in the atmosphere can have a swift impact on the climate. In the near-term, every ton of methane reduced will be equivalent to over 100 tons of carbon dioxide reduced over the subsequent five years. Methane alone is responsible for approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius of current warming. 

    Today, GHGSat’s constellation of satellites traces greenhouse gas emissions directly to industrial facilities at an unmatched cadence, arming industry and government decision-makers with data and insights required to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. In 2023 alone, GHGSat’s satellite constellation made more than 3 million observations across 85 countries, identifying nearly 16,000 emissions over the super-emitter threshold of 100 kilograms of methane per hour. Since COP28, GHGSat has identified more than 20,000 plumes at this threshold, highlighting the scale of the emissions challenge and need for greater monitoring coverage.

    “Industry, governments and financial services are hungry for this data, which fills a critical emissions knowledge gap,” said Stephane Germain, CEO and Founder of GHGSat. “Since the launch of GHGSat’s first satellite in 2016, we have pinpointed and measured tens of thousands of emissions worldwide. But without the significant number of satellites required to orbit the planet more frequently, we risk merely scratching the surface of the true extent of global emissions. With this rapid scale-up, GHGSat will unlock a level of detail about greenhouse gas emissions that was previously unimaginable.”

    As part of the expansion, GHGSat is working with a group of long-standing partners, all renowned and world-class space and manufacturing companies, to develop and deliver the satellites.

    This scale-up is critical to enable carbon-intensive industries to fulfill ambitious methane pledges from previous COPs, such as the Global Methane Pledge announced at COP26 and the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter announced at COP28. The Global Methane Pledge counted 158 countries as of March 2024 with the stated ambition of reducing global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. The Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter saw the commitment of the world’s largest oil and natural gas companies to end routine flaring, reduce upstream methane emissions to near-zero by 2030, and achieve Net Zero emissions from operations by 2050. GHGSat provides robust emissions data and frequent monitoring of assets in support of these initiatives, and many others. As discussions at COP29 seek to turn climate pledges into tangible progress, data will be foundational to understanding the current baseline of emissions and rapidly trace leaks for mitigation action.

    Source: GHGSat

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  • SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink mission finally launches after failed attempts

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    SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched on Thursday, carrying another batch of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.

    The SpaceX Starlink 6-77 mission, which deployed 23 satellites, lifted off at 3:19 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This marked the third flight for the Falcon 9 booster, having previously supported one Starlink mission and a NASA Crew-9 launch to the International Space Station.

    The launch came after a series of delays that had pushed the mission back from its initial target of November 3. On Sunday, the launch was scrubbed just two minutes before liftoff due to a helium leak on the rocket’s first stage.

    Another attempt on Wednesday was also called off, reportedly due to unfavorable weather conditions.

    “Hold, hold, hold. Standing down for helium, stage one,” a SpaceX team member could be heard saying during the live broadcast of the planned Sunday launch on X (formerly Twitter).

    Thursday’s liftoff was pushed back by six minutes, but SpaceX did not provide an official reason for the delay. Approximately eight minutes after launch, the Falcon 9 booster landed safely on the “Just Read the Instructions” drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, just west of the Bahamas.

    SpaceX confirmed the successful deployment of the Starlink satellites in a post on X, saying: “Deployment of 23 @Starlink satellites confirmed.”

    A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Expedition 72 astronauts lifts off from launch complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sept. 28, 2024. The same booster was used on Thursday to…


    GREGG NEWTON/Getty

    What is Starlink?

    Starlink is SpaceX’s ambitious project to build a global satellite internet network. The constellation currently has over 7,170 satellites in orbit, with plans to eventually launch in excess of 40,000.

    These satellites orbit much closer to Earth, at around 340 miles, compared to traditional satellite internet providers.

    Where is SpaceX Located?

    While SpaceX’s headquarters are located in California, the company has a testing facility in Texas and launch complexes in Florida, California, and Texas.

    The Starlink 6-77 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, marking the 96th booster landing for the “Just Read the Instructions” drone ship and the 362nd booster landing to date for SpaceX.

    In addition to its launch complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, SpaceX has several other sites around the country where it conducts its rocket launches.

    The company’s headquarters and primary manufacturing facility are located in Hawthorne, California, but it also has a testing facility in McGregor, Texas.

    SpaceX’s other active launch sites include Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and its own privately-owned Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

    The Starbase location is where SpaceX develops, manufactures, tests, and launches its Starship spacecraft, which are the next-generation launch vehicles the company is building to enable crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.

    Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about SpaceX? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

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  • The US Navy Is Going All In on Starlink

    The US Navy Is Going All In on Starlink

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    “Having the ability to reach out to friends or family allows our sailors the opportunity to decompress for a few minutes, and that in turn allows them to be able to operate more efficiently,” Richard Haninger, the Ford’s deployed resiliency educator, said following the installation of the SEA2 system aboard the carrier in February 2023. “It’s not just about reaching back to friends and family, the ability to pay a bill online, take an online class, or even just check the score of the game […] all of this allows our Sailors the chance to access something that lowers their stress level, then return to work after a quick break more focused and able to complete the mission.”

    But beyond morale-boosting applications, SEA2 also purportedly offers major benefits for “tactical and business applications” used by sailors on a daily basis, like, say, those used for air wing maintenance or for tracking pay and benefits. As White explained in a May release from the Navy on the initiative, most of these applications function at higher classification levels and are encrypted, but they’re still designed to operate on the commercial internet without jeopardizing information security.

    “The fact that we’re not making use of that opportunity with modern technology to allow classified tactical applications to ride the commercial internet is where we are missing out, so we built [SEA2] to be able to do that in the future,” as White put it. “We’re close to demonstrating a couple of those applications, and I am fully confident it will be game changing.” (As of June, the Navy had not authorized the use of classified data with the system)

    The Navy also expects to see broad “tangible warfighting impact” from the proliferation of SEA2 across the surface fleet, namely on “recruitment and retention, mental health, cloud services, and work stoppages due to slow and inaccessible websites,” as one service official told DefenseScoop in April.

    The Navy isn’t the only service embracing Starlink to enable faster, persistent internet for deployed service members. The US Space Force signed a $70 million contract with Starlink parent company SpaceX in October 2023 to provide “a best effort and global subscription for various land, maritime, stationary and mobility platforms and users” using Starshield, the company’s name for its military products. The US Army currently remains reliant on Starlink, but the service has been casting about for fresh commercial satellite constellations to tap into for advanced command and control functions, according to Defense News. And SpaceX is actively building a network of “hundreds” of specialized Starshield spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, Reuters reported earlier this year.

    But Starlink is far from a perfect system, especially for potential military applications. According to a technical report obtained by The Debrief, Ukraine has claimed that Russia’s military intelligence agency has conducted “large-scale cyberattacks” to access data from the Starlink satellite constellations that have proven essential to the former’s military communications infrastructure since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. Indeed, significant hardware vulnerabilities have imperiled Starlink terminals at the hands of experienced hackers, as WIRED has previously documented.

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    Jared Keller

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  • This Gargantuan Lab Simulates Blasting Satellites Into Space

    This Gargantuan Lab Simulates Blasting Satellites Into Space

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    Satellites go through a lot. As they hurtle around our planet at up to 17,000 miles an hour they must cope with the extreme vacuum of space and vast temperature swings, all while trying to precisely train their antennas back to Earth. And that’s after launch, where they’ll be shaken like a can of paint and blasted with deafening noise.

    To get them ready for this ordeal, all satellites are painstakingly tested before dispatch, ensuring every loose bolt is tightened and all the electrics are in exquisite working order. That used to require trips to multiple locations for different tests, but in the UK, the newly opened National Satellite Test Facility in Oxfordshire offers a full satellite health check under one roof.

    “The industry said they needed a one-stop-shop where they can do all of their testing for their large complex satellites in one place,” says Sarah Beardsley, the director of the UK government-funded Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Space, which runs the new facility based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. “This is the result of years of hard work.”

    Construction began in late 2018, after the UK government announced it would invest £99 million ($126 million) in the NSTF to develop “a world-class facility” for testing satellites. Originally set to begin operations in 2020, the project was hit by delays, including Covid, that saw its grand opening pushed back to May 2024. Multiple satellites will be put through their paces every year, with Airbus set to be the first customer to use the facility for its new Skynet 6A communications satellite in July.

    There are four testing areas inside the NSTF. The first you come to when you walk in—after donning protective garments to keep the facility as clean as possible—is the huge vacuum test chamber around which the whole building had to be constructed. “There’s no door big enough to fit it through,” says Beardsley. Inside this chamber, pumps can lower the pressure to just 0.00001 millibars, mimicking the vacuum of space, while a nitrogen coolant system can raise and lower the temperature between -180 and 130 degrees Celsius, the extreme range a satellite might experience as it moves in and out of sunlight during orbit.

    This calibration model represents a typical size and shape for satellites tested at the NSTF.

    photograph: greg white

    At seven meters wide and 12 meters deep, this is the largest vacuum test chamber in the UK. It is so large that the immense door needed to close the chamber, constructed in Turkey and Italy before arriving in Britain by boat just days before lockdown in 2020, was at the size limit of what would fit on a UK motorway. Gates at Portsmouth dock had to be widened to get the door off the ship. “We had the largest peacetime convoy going up the A34 to arrive here,” says Beardsley. Satellites will spend weeks or even months inside the test chamber to ensure they can cope with the conditions of outer space: When WIRED visited, a mock satellite called The Iron Chicken—a deep cut to the character who lives in a metal nest orbiting the moon in the cult-classic British children’s animation The Clangers—took pride of place at the chamber’s entrance.

    Image may contain Indoors Interior Design Person Architecture and Building

    Antennas are tested in a room lined with 40,000 insulating foam spikes.

    photograph: greg white

    After the vacuum-chamber test, satellites will then head to the vibration- and acoustic-testing room. Here, it will be shaken violently—horizontally and vertically—on two pads powered by a pair of electromagnetic engines (nicknamed Wallace and Gromit after the beloved stop-motion characters) that simulate the extreme conditions of a launch. The shaking will expose the satellite to 222 kilonewtons of force, equivalent to four times the bite of a T. Rex. If anything is even slightly loose on a satellite, these machines will find out.

    During acoustic testing, a giant wall of 48 speakers will blast satellites with up to 146 decibels of white noise. For a human, this would be like standing in the jet engine of a plane. “You would have severe hearing damage,” says Ian Horsfall, dynamics group leader at RAL Space. This test is designed to mimic both the noise of the rocket engines on liftoff and the excruciating volume at the top of the rocket—where satellites are stored on their way into orbit.

    In the antenna-testing room, 40,000 foam spikes on the wall absorb all noise and electromagnetic waves from satellites, while the room acts as a Faraday cage to block incoming electromagnetic radiation. A satellite’s antenna can then be focused onto a receiver in the room, to check that its beam can be directed from orbit back down to Earth, despite being hundreds or thousands of kilometers distant and traveling at immense speeds.

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    Jonathan O’Callaghan

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  • Tysons-based Intelsat to be acquired for $3.1 billion – WTOP News

    Tysons-based Intelsat to be acquired for $3.1 billion – WTOP News

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    Tysons, Virginia-based satellite operator Intelsat has agreed to be acquired by Luxembourg-based satellite company SES SA for $3.1 billon.

    Tysons, Virginia-based satellite operator Intelsat has agreed to be acquired by Luxembourg-based satellite company SES SA for $3.1 billon.

    Boards of both companies have approved the merger. It is expected to get all required regulatory approvals by the second half of 2025. The merged company will be headquartered in Luxembourg, but will retain a presence at its offices in Tysons.

    Intelsat emerged from bankruptcy in 2022. It held merger negotiations with SES last year, which did not lead to an agreement.

    “Over the past two years, the Intelsat team has executed a remarkable strategic reset. We have reversed a 10-year negative trend to return to growth, established a new and game-changing technology roadmap, and focused on productivity and execution to deliver competitive capabilities,” said Intelsat CEO David Wajsgras.

    SES and Intelsat combined will operate more than 100 geostationary earth and 26 medium earth orbit satellites, with more than a dozen others scheduled to launch into space by 2026.

    Its satellites serve a wide range of customers, including government agencies, media outlets, pay-TV, sat-phone customers, maritime and aviation.

    Intelsat was founded in 1964. Among its historical achievements was broadcasting NASA’s first moon walk.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Jeff Clabaugh

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  • Space Force Is Planning a Military Exercise in Orbit

    Space Force Is Planning a Military Exercise in Orbit

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    The Victus Haze mission is more complicated than Victus Nox, involving two prime contractors, two spacecraft, and two rocket launches from different spaceports, all timed to occur with short timelines “to keep the demonstration as realistic as possible,” a Space Force spokesperson told Ars.

    “This demonstration will ultimately prepare the United States Space Force to provide future forces to combatant commands to conduct rapid operations in response to adversary on-orbit aggression,” Space Systems Command said in a statement.

    Faith in Commercial Space

    “This is a really significant operational demonstration that is really pushing the envelope on technology and demonstrates a lot of faith in the US industrial base,” Rogers said.

    “Fundamentally, this is about characterizing an unknown capability for the first time in low-Earth orbit,” Rogers said in an interview with Ars. “There are a whole host of challenges that come with that, consistent coverage with communications, how do you track a maneuvering object in low-Earth orbit with limited space domain awareness capabilities, what’s the right level of autonomy and human interaction?”

    True Anomaly’s first two Jackal satellites launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission last month, but the company announced a few weeks later that the two satellites would be unable to complete their planned rendezvous demonstration. This would have been a precursor to the type of activity True Anomaly and Rocket Lab will demonstrate on Victus Haze.

    Rogers said his company is working on two more demonstration missions that will fly before Victus Haze.

    The military’s Defense Innovation Unit awarded $32 million to Rocket Lab for its part of the Victus Haze mission. True Anomaly’s contract with SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the Space Force, is valued at $30 million. True Anomaly is contributing $30 million in private capital to help pay for the mission, bringing the total cost of Victus Haze to approximately $92 million. Space Safari, a division of Space Systems Command, oversees the entire project.

    “We recognize the significant opportunity to leverage the commercial space industry’s innovations to counter China as America’s pacing threat,” said Colonel Bryon McClain, Space Systems Command’s program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power. “The United States has the most innovative space industry in the world. Victus Haze will demonstrate, under operationally realistic conditions, our ability to respond to irresponsible behavior on orbit.”

    “Once the build phase is completed the mission will enter several successive phases to include hot standby, activation, alert, and launch phases,” the Space Force said. “While this is a coordinated demonstration, each vendor will be given unique launch and mission profiles.”

    True Anomaly’s Jackal satellite, nearly as large as a refrigerator, will launch on a “rapid rideshare” mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Space Systems command said. This will most likely be a rideshare launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launching on a rideshare flight comes with different challenges than launching on a dedicated rocket, as the Victus Nox mission did last year.

    True Anomaly says it could get its satellite out of storage and integrate it with a rocket in 12 to 84 hours, depending on the flight cadence of the launch provider. After the launch of True Anomaly’s Jackal, the Space Force will give Rocket Lab a 24-hour call-up to launch its satellite, similar in size to True Anomaly’s spacecraft, on an Electron rocket from New Zealand or from Virginia. Rocket Lab’s launch must be precisely timed to allow its satellite to rendezvous with True Anomaly’s spacecraft in orbit.

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    Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

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  • SpaceX will deorbit 100 Starlink satellites with unidentified flaw | TechCrunch

    SpaceX will deorbit 100 Starlink satellites with unidentified flaw | TechCrunch

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    SpaceX announced today that it will be sending some 100 Starlink satellites to an early retirement after a flaw was identified that could make them a worry later on. Don’t expect a fiery light show, though, and if you use Starlink, your service should be unaffected.

    The announcement explains that “the Starlink team identified a common issue” in this subset of first-generation communication satellites that could “increase the probability of failure.”

    I’ve asked the company for further details and will update this post if I hear back, but based on the description and context, it seems likely that the “failure” in question would mean a loss of control. 17 Starlink satellites are “currently non-maneuverable,” but SpaceX did not say whether this was due to the same issue as the 100 being deorbited.

    Unpowered satellites are more or less just debris, even if at a low orbit like this one they’ll burn up in a few years rather than in a few hundred. One of the criticisms of mega-constellations like Starlink is their potential to contribute to the space junk problem, and SpaceX doesn’t want to be the one people point at when the sky is full of broken satellites.

    That explains why, with these satellites were working perfectly well despite their age, SpaceX has decided to initiate controlled descents to take them out of orbit.

    The descents will be triggered “in the coming weeks and months,” but these satellites aren’t capable of big moves, so this is more of a nudge in the downward direction. The deorbit process will actually take about six months, during which they will also “take maneuver responsibility for any high-risk conjunctions,” meaning if they happen to cross paths with another satellites, the Starlink ones will politely move out of the way.

    They will fall one by one, not all together, so don’t bother watching the skies.

    Users of Starlink need not fear, however, since there are still thousands of functioning satellites up there. Nearly 6,000 have been launched to date, and 406 have been deorbited, and others may not be operational, but there are more then enough of them to serve customers.

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    Devin Coldewey

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  • A top Chinese carmaker is launching satellites into low-Earth orbit for real-time communication anywhere—giving Elon Musk’s SpaceX some company

    A top Chinese carmaker is launching satellites into low-Earth orbit for real-time communication anywhere—giving Elon Musk’s SpaceX some company

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    A Chinese rocket launched a group of communications satellites produced by one of the country’s largest carmakers, boosting the nation’s efforts to catch up in low-Earth orbit — an area dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

    Eleven satellites made by Geespace, a subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., lifted off aboard a Long March CZ-2C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province on Saturday at 7.37 a.m. local time, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

    For Geespace, it’s the long-awaited second such launch following an initial batch of nine satellites it sent to orbit in mid-2022.

    Geespace wants to deploy a network of satellites some 600 kilometers (373 miles) above the Earth that can one day link to driverless cars and support other features in Geely vehicles. The company also hopes they will be able to provide links for consumer electronics. As competition in China’s auto market heats up and space infrastructure improves, satellite communications are becoming another important selling point to consumers. 

    “Right now, I might have satellite function and you don’t,” Geespace Chief Executive Officer Tony Wang said in an interview with Bloomberg News before the launch. “But in the future, everyone will be equipped with the feature, and also every car.”

    Wang referred to two smartphones in Huawei Technologies Co.’s Mate series, which support satellite-enabled dialing and also connect to China’s Beidou satellite navigation system. Geespace’s satellite communication is now available in several of Geely group’s EVs, including the Zeekr 001 FR and 007, and the Galaxy E8.

    China has made major strides in developing its space program, including landings on Mars and the far side of the moon, and has plans for a “rapid establishment” of a “massive” constellation in low-Earth orbit, the Global Times reported in late December. 

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    However, state-owned enterprises so far have been slow in building that low-Earth orbit presence, and the Geely subsidiary is one of the only private-sector companies to try operating satellites there. SpaceX operates more than 5,300 satellites in low-Earth orbit and continues to launch dozens more every month.

    This weekend’s launch came more than 18 months after Geespace deployed its first batch of satellites. The company now faces a tight schedule if it hopes to meet its goal of deploying the constellation’s 72-satellite first phase by next year.

    “To establish this satellite constellation, we need to set up the network, on-the-ground infrastructure and also push forward the commercialization of cloud service,” Wang said. “It is a lot of pressure.”

    The group’s billionaire founder and Chairman — Li Shufu — owns almost 10% of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Geely owns stakes in other foreign automakers such as Volvo AB and Lotus Technology Inc. Li also picked Geespace’s Chinese name, which means a path in time and space.

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    Geely was China’s third-largest auto exporter last year, behind only SAIC Motor Corp. and Chery Automobile Co. Geespace plans to one day offer its service globally, Wang said, “to provide real-time satellite communication anywhere in the world except the north and south poles.”

    In 2021, Geespace completed the construction of a factory in the eastern Chinese city of Taizhou that’s capable of producing 500 satellites a year. The company has sold dozens of those satellites to Chinese startups, universities and others involved in space, Wang said. 

    “The next race for the EV sector is self driving and the Internet of Things service. Telecommunications infrastructure is also moving from 5G to 6G. One of its key features is the wide use of satellite communications and navigations network,” Wang said. “We think the demand and the size for this market will reach an inflection point very soon.”

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    Linda Lew, Bruce Einhorn, Bloomberg

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