Tag Archives: satellites

“You have arrived at your destination.” This phrase, delivered with robotic cadence, is familiar to anyone who uses satellite navigation systems to guide them on sightseeing strolls, cross-country road trips, and all manner of journeys from point A to point B. But what if your destination is literally out of …

Life aboard a US Navy warship at sea can be stressful, boring, and lonely, with separation from friends and family and long stretches between port calls both isolating and monotonous. Now, Elon Musk is here to take the edge off. In a now deleted press release from the Naval Information …

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 …

A new report by a consumer advocacy group calls for a renewed push to review the environmental effects of low-Earth-orbit satellites like the ones operated by StarLink. These are satellites that scoot around in orbit, somewhere between 300 and 1,200 miles from Earth’s surface. For most of humanity’s ventures into …

Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Wednesday that would have reaffirmed a nearly 50-year-old ban on placing weapons of mass destruction into orbit, two months after reports Russia has plans to do just that. Russia's vote against the resolution was no surprise. As one of the five permanent …

The US Space Force announced Thursday it is partnering with two companies, Rocket Lab and True Anomaly, for a first-of-its-kind mission to demonstrate how the military might counter “on-orbit aggression.” On this mission, a spacecraft built and launched by Rocket Lab will chase down another satellite made by True Anomaly, …

Two prototype satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and four missile-tracking satellites for the US Space Force rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Wednesday from Florida's Space Coast. These satellites are part of a new generation of spacecraft designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia …

Way up in the sky and sprinkled across the seas, two of the littlest yet most influential things in the world have stubbornly guarded their secrets: aerosols and phytoplankton. Today, NASA launched its Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem mission, or PACE, to unravel their mysteries. The mission’s findings could be …

In the beginning there was only one. It looked like an aluminum beach ball with four car antennas sticking out. Stuffed with radio transmitters, history’s first human-made satellite emitted a spectral beeping signal from its solitary orbit for just three weeks before its batteries died. That was enough to terrify …

Amazon is set to launch two satellite prototypes for its Project Kuiper network, which will eventually number more than 3,200 orbiters. Project Kuiper could become a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, which is now nearly 4,800 strong. Amazon’s launch is planned for 2 pm Eastern time today, with a backup …