Latest Satellites Stories

Satellites are big. They cost a lot of money. At least that's the impression a couple of University of Maryland-College Park students had when they applied for an internship to help construct a satellite instrument with scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. As the pair quickly discovered, nothing could have been farther from the truth.To their astonishment, the satellite that Saman Kholdebarin and Lida Ramsey helped to develop was literally the size of a...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is challenging high school teams to design software to program small satellites aboard the International Space Station. The competition centers on the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES.(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) SPHERES are bowling ball-sized spherical satellites used to test maneuvers for...

CENTENNIAL, Colo., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- SEAKR Engineering, Inc., a privately held company, today announced that Thales Alenia Space (TAS), the Iridium NEXT prime contractor, has awarded the communication processor for the Iridium NEXT constellation to SEAKR Engineering. The Iridium NEXT constellation will ultimately replace the existing Iridium constellation providing enhanced mobile satellite communication services worldwide, with the first Iridium NEXT satellite launches scheduled for...

DENVER, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Students from the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC) have teamed with Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) to develop a miniature satellite, known as ALL-STAR, which stands for Agile Low-cost Laboratory for Space Technology Acceleration and Research. The ALL-STAR program, designed to inspire and develop America's future technological workforce, will provide students hands on experience in applying science, technology, engineering and math skills to building...

NASA has announced a second opportunity for small satellite payloads to fly on rockets planned to launch in 2011 and 2012. These CubeSats could be auxiliary cargo on previously planned missions.CubeSats are a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. The cube-shaped satellites are approximately four inches long, have a volume of about one quart and weigh less than 2.2 pounds.CubeSat investigations should be consistent with NASA's Strategic Plan or the Education Strategic...

A better understanding of how Earth's ice fields are changing has come another step closer as the first data from ESA's ice mission are released to selected scientists around the world for fine-tuning.This release, which comes just three months after CryoSat-2 was launched, is the first milestone in the scientific exploitation of the mission's data. These data are essential for determining tiny variations in the thickness of ice floating in the polar oceans and in the large ice sheets that...

An Air Force satellite that will provide the first continuous tracking of thousands of pieces of space debris and hundreds of satellites is set to launch on Thursday.The new Space-Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite is set to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and will give scientists a full-time view of the increasingly congested traffic in Earth's orbit.The Air Force currently lacks such a system, and must rely instead on a ground-based global network of radar and optical...

You won't find any light sabers on the International Space Station, but you will find a trio of "droids" that look a lot like what any self-respecting science fiction fan remembers as a Star Wars "remote."That's the tricky little device that Luke Skywalker used to hone his light-saber skills before he went up against Darth Vader and the rest of the evil empire.But instead of being used for light-saber practice, the droids on the space station are being used to test automated rendezvous and...

NASA has successfully completed a comprehensive pre-shipment review of the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite, or FASTSAT, a small, microsatellite class spacecraft bus that will carry six experiment payloads to low-Earth orbit.The pre-shipment review was completed in May, demonstrating the flight hardware has successfully passed all environmental and performance tests and is authorized for shipment to the launch site for final integration on the Minotaur IV launch vehicle,...

Iridium, a mobile satellite services provider, has ordered 81 spacecraft to help grow its global network. Thales Alenia Space of France (TAS) will build the satellites.  The operational constellation will require 66 satellites, and the remaining 15 will be used as spares. The order makes the Iridium Next venture the largest commercial space project ever. The French export credit guarantee organization Coface will finance most of the $2.9 billion project. "We are very pleased with the...