Accion Systems, the startup aiming to reinvent satellite propulsion with an innovative and tiny new thruster, has attracted significant investment from Boeing’s HorizonX Ventures. The $3 million round should give the company a bit of breathing room while it continues to prove and improve its technology.
View More Accion Systems takes on $3M in Boeing-led round to advance its tiny satellite thrustersCategory: Satellites
California is ‘launching our own damn satellite’ to track pollution, with help from Planet
California plans to launch a satellite to monitor pollution in the state and contribute to climate science, Governor Jerry Brown announced today. The state is partnering with satellite imagery purveyor Planet to create a custom craft to “pinpoint – and stop – destructive emissions with unprecedented precision, on a scale that’s never been done before.”
View More California is ‘launching our own damn satellite’ to track pollution, with help from PlanetSatellite startups turn to reinventing broadband, mapping and other industries
Smartphones have disrupted transportation, payments and communication. But the underlying technology has tangentially changed a completely different sector: satellites.
View More Satellite startups turn to reinventing broadband, mapping and other industriesLava transforms a Hawaiian bay into a blackened peninsula
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The shallow, tropical waters of the Big Island’s Kapoho Bay are no longer: Satellite images show a bay overtaken by lava, transformed into a black mass of land jetting into the sea.
Lava meeting the ocean is, of course, the way Hawaiian islands grow. Unfortunately, the rumbling flow of lava from the Kilauea volcano engulfed more than 130 homes in the neighborhoods of Vacationland and Kapoho Beach Lots — including the home of the Hawaii County Mayor — before oozing to the beach.
As of June 6, the island’s Civil Defense agency said lava is still actively pouring into the ocean, where it produces dangerous clouds of acidic steam, filled with natural glass particles. Read more…
More about Science, Lava Flow, Hawaii, Satellites, and Geology
View More Lava transforms a Hawaiian bay into a blackened peninsulaWhy Australia is spending millions to make GPS signals more accurate
Maybe Australians haven’t noticed, but the little blue marker showing where you are in Google Maps, or even Apple Maps, isn’t as accurate as it could be.
It’s why Australia is spending over A$260 million (US$193 million) to invest in satellite infras…
Tiny satellites named Wall-E and Eva are about to take a trip to Mars. Will they survive?
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Two tiny NASA satellites nicknamed Wall-E and Eva are about to hitch a ride to Mars.
The twin, suitcase-sized spacecraft, called cubesats, will launch to space Saturday aboard the same rocket carrying NASA’s InSight lander to Mars, but they’ll have very different missions once they reach the red planet in November.
While InSight is expected to unlock the secrets of the planet’s interior from the ground, the cubesats — collectively named MarCO, short for Mars Cube One — will stay in orbit around Mars to test out if these little spacecraft can relay information from the lander back to Earth. Read more…
More about Science, Mars, Planetary Science, Satellites, and Mars Lander
View More Tiny satellites named Wall-E and Eva are about to take a trip to Mars. Will they survive?UK’s Open Cosmos raises $7M Series A to democratize satellites
As you can probably imagine, launching satellites is a complicated business. To get into the game, companies must often go to the biggest players, like NASA. It puts the opportunity for small companies to participate in the benefits of satellite usage completely out of reach. Until recently. Mini or nano-satellites are proliferating, and so are […]
View More UK’s Open Cosmos raises $7M Series A to democratize satellitesEarthNow promises real-time views of the whole planet from a new satellite constellation
A new space imaging startup called EarthNow aims to provide not just pictures of the planet on demand, but real-time video anywhere a client desires. Its ambition is matched only by its pedigree: Bill Gates, Intellectual Ventures, Airbus, Softbank, and OneWeb founder Greg Wyler are all backing the play.
View More EarthNow promises real-time views of the whole planet from a new satellite constellationSpaceX gains approval for largest satellite internet service, ever
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX just got permission to operate 4,425 satellites that could one day provide internet service from space.
That would vastly increase access to the internet — especially in rural areas — and possibly create a ton of space junk.
Not that SpaceX is anywhere near ready to flip the switch on a new internet service. So far, it’s only launched two demo satellites. But this is a big step forward.
In a statement released Thursday, the FCC said it was the first approval of “a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies.” Read more…
More about Elon Musk, Spacex, Satellites, Science, and Consumer Tech
View More SpaceX gains approval for largest satellite internet service, everFCC accuses stealth space startup of unauthorized satellite deployment
The FCC has denied a space startup permission to launch a collection of communications satellites after discovering that it had already launched some — after being told not to. Swarm Technologies, still in stealth mode, appears to have gone ahead with the deployment of four satellites deemed too small to be tracked and therefore unsafe to put into orbit. Read More
Thousands of SpaceX Starlink satellites could pose ‘unprecedented’ space junk problem
The derelict Russian satellite Cosmos 2251 had been aimlessly spinning around Earth for nearly 15 years when, in 2009, it slammed into a functional Iridium telecommunication satellite at 26,000 miles per hour.
This collision sprayed an estimated 200,…
A satellite secretly launched by a little rocket is expected to be ‘the brightest thing in the night sky’
This was unexpected.
On Wednesday, the New Zealand rocket company Rocket Lab announced that it launched a secret satellite to space aboard the test flight of its Electron rocket over the weekend.
That satellite, known as the Humanity Star…