Latest Satellite Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA has released a game for your mobile device, just in time for World Space Week. Gamers are challenged to take on the role of a space communications network manager as the game puts them in charge of building a communications network to support scientific missions. October 4 – 10 is World Space Week, the "largest public space event on Earth" according to the United Nations. An international celebration of science and technology,...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Russian space agency’s Mission Control said it will need to move the International Space Station (ISS) into a new orbit to avoid a possible collision with space debris, Interfax news agency reported today. Mission Control spokeswoman Nadyezhda Zavyalova said the Russian Zvezda module will fire its booster rockets on Thursday at 7:22 a.m. Moscow time (0322 GMT) to clear the orbiting lab from the path of a fragment of debris...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The twin Galileo satellites are now fueled and ready for the launch planned for the evening of October 12, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA said that technicians filled up the two satellites' tanks with hydrazine fuel, which is used to maintain the satellites' attitude and orbital position during their 12-year lifetime. The Galileo satellites will be transported to medium orbit by the Fregat fourth stage of their...
NOAA's GOES-13 weather satellite has been temporarily substituted with the back-up GOES satellite as engineers work to fix the satellite's issues. NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13 sits in a fixed orbit over the eastern U.S. and provides continuous coverage of weather systems over the continental U.S. and the Atlantic Ocean basin. According to NOAA, the GOES-13 Imager went out of service since September 23, 2012 at 2122 UTC (5:22 p.m. EDT), and the...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A European weather satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today (Sept. 17) at 10:29 p.m. local time (12:29 p.m. EDT) aboard a Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket, according to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. The MetOp-B satellite will be used to acquire data critical for weather forecasters. The flight into orbit lasted just over an hour and went off without a hitch. MetOp-B will ensure there remains a...
As preparations for the launch of Europe’s latest weather satellite continue on track, the team in Kazakhstan has said farewell to MetOp-B as it was sealed in the Soyuz rocket fairing. Liftoff is set for 16:28 GMT (18:28 CEST) on Monday. Encapsulation is an important and somewhat emotional milestone on the road to launch as it is the last time MetOp-B will be seen. The launch campaign team has spent the last six weeks or so at the Baikonur Cosmodrome testing and preparing this...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The second pair of Galileo navigation satellites is being prepared for launch from Europe's Spaceport in October. The third Galileo satellite's propellant tank will be getting filled with hydrazine fuel this week, and the fourth will be getting its propellant tank filled next week. The twin satellites will be hitching a ride aboard the Soyuz ST-B on October 10, then will meet up with the first two Galileo satellites currently in...
ESA, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the DLR German Aerospace Center and the German Aerospace Industries Association will be exhibiting in the ‘Space for Earth’ space pavilion at the ILA Berlin Air and Space Show on 11–16 September. ILA is one of the world’s largest aerospace trade shows, organized every two years by the BDLI aerospace industries association. This year, it will take place in its new premises at the Berlin Expo-Center Airport close to the...
Europe’s latest weather satellite got a glimpse of the Moon before our celestial neighbor disappeared from view behind Earth on Friday. Since its launch two months ago, MSG-3 has been working well and is on its way to entering service. The image shows the second full Moon of the month – known as a ‘blue’ Moon – just before it disappeared from the MSG-3 satellite’s sight behind the southern hemisphere. Brazil’s eastern coast along the South Atlantic Ocean is also visible,...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA engineers have developed three prototype nanosatellites powered by HTC-brand smartphones, the US space agency has announced. The PhoneSat program, as it has been dubbed, is currently ongoing at the Ames Research Center in California and is focused on using straight out of the box smartphones to make inexpensive, easy-to-build satellites, NASA officials explained in a statement. The engineers, they say, are attempting to...
Latest Satellite Reference Libraries
Satellite -- A satellite is an object that orbits another object. With sufficient tangential velocity, the object does not collide with the primary object it orbits, but maintains a distance from that object as the rate at which it falls towards that object is similar to the rate that it travels away, thus the object orbits the primary object and becomes a satellite. In other words: gravitational force serves as the centripetal force needed to make the object circle the primary...
NEAR-Shoemaker Mission -- The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its launch in honor of Gene Shoemaker, is an unmanned spacecraft designed to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The primary scientific objectives of NEAR were to return data on the bulk properties, composition, mineralogy, morphology, internal mass distribution and magnetic field of Eros. Secondary objectives include studies of regolith...
Lagrangian Point -- In Lagrangian mechanics, a Lagrangian point (or L-point) is one of five positions in space where the gravitational fields of two bodies of substantial but differing mass combine to form a point at which a third body of negligible mass would be stationary relative to the two bodies. Bodies at the L-point will not move relative to the parent bodies if they are not perturbed by other gravitational forces. They are sometimes also referred to as libration points. The...
Orbit -- An orbit is the path that an object makes around another object under the influence of some force. The classical example is that of the solar system, where the Earth, other planets, asteroids, comets, and smaller pieces of rubble are in orbit around the Sun; and moons are in orbit around planets. These days, many artificial satellites are in orbit around the Earth. Understanding orbits There are a few common ways of understanding orbits. -- As the object moves, it...
![Flying Steady: Mission Control Tunes Up Aqua\](/media/gallery/a-train-satellite-aqua/thumbs/thumbs_aqua_render_lrg.jpg "Flying Steady: Mission Control Tunes Up Aqua\")
