SpaceX launches Starship’s sixth flight test including a banana as the payload – SatNews
Original Publication Date: 2024-11-20 00:00
SpaceX successfully launched Starship from Texas to complete the sixth flight test. Starship’s cargo consists of a dangling banana revealing the magnitude of the size of the vehicle. The rocket will blast off with a “banana for scale” sticker on the side, a nod to a meme beloved by engineers and space enthusiasts.
SpaceX Starlink Group 6-66 ready to launch 24 smallsats on Thursday – SatNews
Original Publication Date: 2024-11-20 00:00
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 will launch a batch of 24 satellites into low Earth orbit for the Starlink mega-constellation on Thursday, November 21. The cost of the launch is $52 Million. According to weather officials, there’s a 90% chance of favorable weather conditions at the time of the launch.
Ligado can sue U.S. Government for $39bn in claims that the government stole its L-band spectrum – SatNews
Original Publication Date: 2024-11-20 00:00
Ligado Networks can proceed with their claim for $39 billion (€36.9bn) in damages and compensation from the U.S. Government. A U.S. Federal judge rejected some of Ligado’s minor arguments but has allowed the major portion of the claim to go ahead. Ligado had planned to use its L-band bandwidth to create a global wireless cellphone 5G network.
Bharti buys 24.5% stake in BT from Altice – SatNews
Original Publication Date: 2024-11-20 00:00
Patrick Drahi is under pressure to sell off assets as his Altice Group grapples with €60 billion debt and the fallout from an accounting scandal in Portugal. He agreed in August to sell Altice’s stake in BT to Bharti Enterprises, the majority stakeholder in Bharti Telecom. Bharti Telecom is the largest shareholder in India’s second biggest telco, Bharti Airtel.
NASA to assign missions for two future Artemis cargo landers – SatNews
Original Publication Date: 2024-11-20 00:00
NASA plans to award Blue Origin and SpaceX additional work under their existing contracts to develop landers that will deliver large pieces of equipment and infrastructure to the lunar surface. The large cargo landers will have the capability to land approximately 26,000 to 33,000 pounds of large, heavy payload on the lunar surface.
Discovery Alert: A Rare Glimpse of a Newborn Planet
TESS's transit data shows the planet has a comparatively low density and, likely, an inflated atmosphere. It could well be a planet whose atmosphere will shrink over time. When it finally settles down, it could become a gaseous ‘mini-Neptune’ or even a rocky ‘super-Earth’
NASA’s Swift Reaches 20th Anniversary in Improved Pointing Mode
Swift’s flight operations team lead says the accuracy of Swift’s pointing is now better than it was since launch. “Because we already had the shift to two gyros planned out, we were able to quickly and thoroughly test the procedure here on the ground before implementing it on the spacecraft,” Mark Hilliard said.
NASA Ocean World Explorers Have to Swim Before They Can Fly
NASA is developing an underwater robot for space exploration. A series of prototypes for the SWIM concept recently braved the waters of a competition pool. The robot managed all of this autonomously, without the team’s direct intervention. The robot even spelled out “J-P-L”
NASA Satellites Reveal Abrupt Drop in Global Freshwater Levels
13 of the world’s 30 most intense droughts observed by GRACE occurred since January 2015. Global warming leads the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which results in more extreme precipitation. It remains to be seen whether global freshwater will rebound to pre-2015 values.