The list of countries to achieve their own successful orbital space launch is a short one, almost as small as the exclusive club of states that possess nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union was first off the rank in 1957, with the United States close behind in 1958, and a gaggle of other aerospace-adept states followed […]
When the AMSAT-OSCAR 7 (AO-7) amateur radio satellite was launched in 1974, its expected lifespan was about five years. The plucky little satellite made it to 1981 when a battery failure caused it to be written off as dead. Then, in 2002 it came back to life. The prevailing theory being that one of the […]
In 2015, Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone founded Relativity Space around an ambitious goal: to be the first company to put a 3D printed rocket into orbit. While additive manufacturing was already becoming an increasingly important tool in the aerospace industry, the duo believed it could be pushed further than anyone had yet realized. Rather […]
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander’s first look at the solar eclipse as it began to emerge from its Mare Crisium landing site on March 14 at 5:30 AM UTC. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace) After recently landing at the Moon’s Mare Crisium, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander craft was treated to a spectacle that’s rarely observed: a total […]
As part of the payloads on the Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 (BGM1) that recently touched down on the Moon, the Lunar GNNS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) has become the first practical demonstration of acquiring and tracking Earth orbital GNSS satellites. LuGRE consists of a weak-signal GNSS receiver, a high-gain L-band patch antenna the requisite amplification […]
Saying farewell is hard, and in the case of the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft doubly so, seeing as how they have been with us for more than 47 years. From the highs of the 1970s and 1980s during their primary mission in our Solar System, to their journey into the unknown of Deep Space, […]
What does one do when frustrated at the lack of affordable, open source portable trackers? If you’re [OG-star-tech], you design your own and give it modular features that rival commercial offerings while you’re at it. What’s a star tracker? It’s a method of determining position based on visible stars, but when it comes to astrophotography the […]
While we’re still waiting for ET to give us a ring, many worlds might not have life that’s discovered the joys of radio yet. Scientists ran a two-pronged study to see how bacteria might fare on other worlds. We currently define the Habitable Zone (HZ) of a planet by the likelihood that particular planet can […]
Ever been at a party and landed in a heated argument about exactly where the International Space Station (ISS) is passing over at that very instant? Me neither, but it’s probably happened to someone. Assuming you were in that situation, and lacked access to your smartphone or any other form of internet connected device, you […]
Logically we understand that the other planets in the solar system, as well as humanity’s contributions to the cosmos such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station, are zipping around us somewhere — but it can be difficult to conceptualize. Is Jupiter directly above your desk? Is the ISS currently underneath you? […]