PICS (satellite)
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PICS (satellite)
Passive Inspection CubeSats, or PICS, is a technology demonstration spacecraft mission utilizing two CubeSat miniaturized satellites, identified as ''PIC-A'' and ''PIC-B''. The project was developed by students at Brigham Young University (BYU) as part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) initiative beginning in 2016. The satellites are outfitted with cameras to be able to get a 360-degree view to visually assess the exterior of other spacecraft and detect possible damage. BYU professor David Long termed the project a "spacecraft selfie cam." PIC-A and PIC-B were originally scheduled to be launched in 2018, but launch was delayed until 2021. PICs was successfully launched into orbit along with eight other CubeSats during Virgin Orbit's Launch Demo 2 on January 17, 2021. In Virgin Orbit's first successful air-launch-to-orbit, the Boeing 747-400 '' Cosmic Girl'' carried a LauncherOne orbital rocket from Mojave Air and Space Port to the Pacific Ocean, where Launcher ...
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PicSat
PicSat was a French observatory nanosatellite, designed to measure the transit of Beta Pictoris b, an exoplanet which orbits the star Beta Pictoris. PicSat was designed and built by a team of scientists led by Dr. Sylvestre Lacour, astrophysicist and instrumentalist at the High Angular Resolution in Astrophysics group in the LESIA laboratory with Paris Observatory, Paris Sciences et Lettres University and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). It was launched on 12 January 2018, and operated for more than 10 weeks before falling silent on 20 March 2018. The cubesat decayed from orbit on 3 October 2023. Background Beta Pictoris system With an age of about 23 million years, Beta Pictoris is a very young star. Compared to the Sun, which is 4.5 billion years old, Beta Pictoris is about twice as large in mass and size. Beta Pictoris is relatively close to the Sun: just 63.4 light-years away, making it bright and easy to observe. This makes Beta Pictoris int ...
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Educational Launch Of Nanosatellites
Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) is an initiative created by NASA to attract and retain students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. The program is managed by the Launch Services Program (LSP) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and Firefly Aerospace are planning to launch eight CubeSats as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) ELaNa (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites) 43, targeting no earlier than Wednesday, June 26. Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket, in a mission dubbed “Noise of Summer,” will lift off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Overview The ELaNa initiative has made partnerships with universities in the US to design and launch small research satellites called CubeSats (because of their cube shape). These low-cost CubeSat missions provide NASA with valuable opportunities to test emerging technologies that may be useful in future space missions, whil ...
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Spacecraft Launched In 2021
A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, and transportation of humans and cargo. All spacecraft except single-stage-to-orbit vehicles cannot get into space on their own, and require a launch vehicle (carrier rocket). On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a space vehicle enters space and then returns to the surface without having gained sufficient energy or velocity to make a full Earth orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies. Spacecraft used for human spaceflight carry people on board as crew or passengers from start or on orbit (space stations) only, whereas those used for robotic space missions operate either autonomously or telerobotically. Robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space prob ...
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Student Satellites
A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution, or more generally, a person who takes a special interest in a subject. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementary schools are "pupils". Africa Nigeria In Nigeria, education is classified into four systems known as a 6-3-3-4 system of education. It implies six years in primary school, three years in junior secondary, three years in senior secondary and four years in the university. However, the number of years to be spent in university is mostly determined by the course of study. Some courses have longer study lengths than others. Those in primary school are often referred to as pupils. Those in university, as well as those in secondary school, are referred to as students. The Nigerian system of education also has other recognized categories like the polytechnics and colleges of ...
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List Of CubeSats
The following is a list of CubeSats, nanosatellites used primarily by universities for research missions, typically in low Earth orbits. Some CubeSats became Timeline of first satellites by country, their country's first national satellite. The extensive Nanosatellite and CubeSat Database lists nearly 4,000 CubeSats and NanoSats have been launched since 1998. The organization forecasts that 2080 nanosats will launch within the next 6 years. Research and development * SBUDNIC was launched to test Arduino Nano and other commercial off-the-shelf technology in space, using a simple, open-source design. * An ambitious project is the QB50, an international network of 50 CubeSats for multi-point by different universities and other teams, ''in-situ'' measurements in the lower thermosphere (90–350 km) and re-entry research. QB50 is an initiative of the von Karman Institute and is funded by the European Union. Double-unit ("2-U") CubeSats (10x10x20 cm) are foreseen, with one unit (t ...
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Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At in area (as defined with a southern Antarctic border), the Pacific Ocean is the largest division of the World Ocean and the hydrosphere and covers approximately 46% of Earth's water surface and about 32% of the planet's total surface area, larger than its entire land area ().Pacific Ocean
. ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica Concise.'' 2008: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The centers of both the Land and water hemispheres, water hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, as well as the Pole of inaccessi ...
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Cosmic Girl (aircraft)
''Spirit of Mojave'', previously ''Cosmic Girl'' is a Boeing 747-400 aircraft. A former passenger airliner operated by Virgin Atlantic, it was purchased by Virgin Galactic in 2015 to be used as the first stage launch platform (or mothership launch pad) for the air launch stage of the smallsat orbital launch vehicle, the LauncherOne. In 2017, the aircraft was transferred to the orbital launch subsidiary, Virgin Orbit, and its livery updated to ''Virgin Orbit''. LauncherOne attempted its first launch on 25 May 2020; the launch was a failure. The first successful launch (second launch in total) took place on 17 January 2021. Virgin Orbit declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 4, 2023. ''Cosmic Girl'' was subsequently sold at auction to Stratolaunch, to complement their existing Roc launch platform for their Talon Hypersonic testbed vehicle, and was renamed ''Spirit of Mojave''. Airliner ''Cosmic Girl'' was assembled in 2001 at the Boeing Everett Factory as a Boeing 747-41R with t ...
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Boeing 747-400
The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The ''Advanced Series 300'' was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targeting a 10% cost reduction with more efficient engines and of additional range. Northwest Airlines became the first customer with an order for 10 aircraft on October 22, 1985. The first 747-400 was rolled out on January 26, 1988, and made its maiden flight on April 29, 1988. Type certification was received on January 9, 1989, and it entered service with Northwest on February 9, 1989. It retains the 747 airframe, including the 747-300 stretched upper deck, with winglets. The 747-400 offers a choice of improved turbofans: the Pratt & Whitney PW4000, General Electric CF6-80C2 or Rolls-Royce RB211-524G/H. Its two-crew glass cockpit dispenses with the need for a flight engineer. It typically accommodates 416 passengers in a three-class layo ...
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Air-launch-to-orbit
Air-launch-to-orbit (ALTO) is the method of launching smaller rockets at altitude from a heavier conventional horizontal-takeoff aircraft, to carry satellites to low Earth orbit. It is a follow-on development of air launches of experimental aircraft that began in the late 1940s. This method, when employed for orbital payload insertion, presents significant advantages over conventional vertical rocket launches, particularly because of the reduced mass, thrust, cost of the rocket, geographical factors, and natural disasters. Air launching has also been developed for sub-orbital spaceflight. In 2004 the Ansari X Prize $10 Million purse was won by a team led by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, launching the SpaceShipOne from the purpose-built White Knight carrier aircraft. The first air-launch-to-orbit was a test launch of the ASM-135 ASAT antisatellite rocket, the first commercial air-launch-to-orbit took place on 5 April 1990 with a Northrop Grumman Pegasus. Advantages The ...
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NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States's civil list of government space agencies, space program, aeronautics research and outer space, space research. National Aeronautics and Space Act, Established in 1958, it succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the American space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo program missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA supports the International Space Station (ISS) along with the Commercial Crew Program and oversees the development of the Orion (spacecraft), Orion spacecraft and the Sp ...
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Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). BYU offers a variety of academic programs including those in the liberal arts, engineering, agriculture, management, physical and mathematical sciences, nursing, and law. Its undergraduate and graduate programs are organized into 11 colleges and schools at its main Provo campus, with some colleges and divisions defining their own admission standards. The university also administers four satellite campuses, one in BYU Jerusalem Center, Jerusalem, BYU Salt Lake Center, Salt Lake City, BYU Barlow Center, Washington, D.C., and BYU London Study Abroad Centre, London, while its parent organization the Church Educational System (CES) sponsors sister schools in Brigham Young Unive ...
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Miniaturized Satellites
A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites can be built small to reduce the large economic cost of launch vehicles and the costs associated with construction. Miniature satellites, especially in large numbers, may be more useful than fewer, larger ones for some purposes – for example, gathering of scientific data and radio relay. Technical challenges in the construction of small satellites may include the lack of sufficient power storage or of room for a propulsion system. Rationales One rationale for miniaturizing satellites is to reduce the cost; heavier satellites require larger rockets with greater thrust that also have greater cost to finance. In contrast, smaller and lighter satellites require smaller and cheaper launch vehicles and can sometimes be launched in mult ...
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